Aspie authors writing social interaction

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I started writing a short story about a woman who moves from her little island town in Croatia to take care of her sick aunt in America...haven't worked on it the past two days.I really am enjoying it.

I would like to write a book and have a career as an author but something is holding me back. It is the thought of the work not being professional and looking a fool. I know for a fact that the chances of getting your work published is about one in two or three thousand. When I watch films I sometime think I could have made up a better story but others might not think so. I have got a good understanding of science and how life works. To get noticed you have to be either exceptional, a celebrity or royal. Being an author can be lonely work typing away for hours on end. If it is worthwhile this would suit me just find. I don't know of any courses at college where you can train as an author.

major in english, take some creative writing courses, perhaps even psychology, a history course or two, maybe an art history even, and there you go.

I know I have a lot of trouble when it comes to writing out social interactions, because everyone's a robot when I do. I then I usually go out to like a food court or something and write down everything I hear and see...which is difficult at times.
I also will take ideas/insperation from other books and stories, if I really can't come up with anything.

I think when we learn how to describe things most of us have an extremely acute and perceptive take on social interaction.

It's brilliant to see so much success in writing happening here.

Nice to drop in for a chat from time to time as well.

865 words in my current project (I'm aiming for a novel or novella here). It's set in prehistoric Sudan circa 6500 BC and was inspired by Egyptian mythology.

Hi All,
I just signed a contract with Written World Communications for my Shatterworld Trilogy. Yay! The books should appear within the next 18 months.

945 words down, b*****s!

I'm in a cranky mood this morning. I showed my first chapter to some people on the Internet, and their critique essentially said that I needed to rewrite the whole thing all over again. One of their major complaints was that I used too much description, which is ironic because on another message board people were asking for more description!

Hi Brandon, I'm part of an online group of published and aspiring authors. We crit each others work. When you are critting you have to be very careful for a number of reasons.

1. Most work you read isn't anywhere near the finished product . The author may want you to go through a piece to see how it flows or how the dialogue reads etc. Quite often at this stage a critic can pick out something obvious the author has missed , or point to parts which are repeating , perhaps detracting , or plain unnecessary.

2. The structure of the work and the style of writing is particular to the author and is his or her 'own'. Unless there is something really outstanding , it's best to stand back and become objective, because when you get to this level its a bit like criticizing someone for the way they walk or the color of their hair.

3. I'm not sure who has critted your work but I'd take a long hard look at what's been suggested. It's Ok being a general reader and with a rather dismissive wave of a hand announce they'd generally prefer less description in their reading, but they are not the one sweating away trying to produce the stuff. I don't think you should rush off at a tangent
and change something if the advice isn't from an objective critic who is knows a bit about writing themselves.

4.What you are trying to do in critique is primarily hold a mirror up for another writer so they can see how their story looks from a distance, ie from a focal length a writer finds hard to attain because they are so close to, and involved in producing their work .

5. The really good thing is, you can be honest. You can say "I wouldn't choose to read this because I'm personally not interested in the subject matter but I can see why some people would". I personally don't like mythical stories . I never have . I hated being made to read The Hobbit at school. Later I gleefully used a borrowed copy of The Lord Of The Rings to calculate the muzzle velocity of a friend's air rifle . As an adult I now fully acknowledge Tolkien is a better writer than I will ever be and millions of people enjoy his work. I don't , but it wouldn't stop me objectively critting it.

Do you see?

Might be an idea if you suggest forming a crit group here?

Hope that is helpful

Whatever you decide,I wish you every success .

Meme

I enjoy and feel that I'm quite good at writing description, but I find dialogue extremely difficult.

An NT friend online who also writes has exactly the opposite problem. Perhaps we should collaborate.

Hello, I just signed a contract with Written World Communications. They are going to publish my sf trilogy with an aspergirl as the protagonist! And no, I am not paying them, they are going to pay me royalties.

I will post something later in this thread -- I'm just really glad this topic exists. I have several completed short stories, one completed novel, two novels in-progress -- really nice to see such support.

I understand everything in a theoretical manner, so I don't have issues with it.

I'm just caught off guard if I am in a social situation.

I should've popped in here earlier .

I'm in the middle of 2 novels at the moment (I like to switch), one is blatent erotica, so we won't mention that , and the other is ScienceFantasy (great description of a piece of work which just won't cut it when read by David Brin!).

I gave the 2nd one to my dad to read several months ago, and he finally read it on Tuesday . I haven't been chewing off my fingers, honest... Anyway, since he's a scientist and a Sci/Fi fan, I figured he was a good test subject. He liked it! . He really did! Admittedly, said it was similar to a Kurt Vonnegut story from the 60's which I've never read, but I can cope with being derivative .

It wasn't that I was looking for praise, but now I can get back to it without feeling that everyone in the world will hate it . I tend to be very critical of my own work.

But it's nice to be able to say, "hey, I'm working on something too! Yay us!" .

In fact, if I hoover my sewing room, I might start making a dress later. I've got some green embroidered chiffon which I've been dying to turn into something pretty...

4,025 words in my current novel-in-progress now, up from 2,874 yesterday.