Has abctales inspired you to write more

Thanks for the encouragement - you're right, Fecky, I'm spending more time on the blasted stuff now than I ever have! Here goes...soon!!

I owe much to sites like ABCtales. It is just amazing how many people on the net are determined to stop dissilusioned writers from giving up on their writting. Count me in a category of those who were very close to throwing pen and paper in a dusty corner not to see a light of the sunrays again. 'I almost had a chance of telling a story has now become. I still do. How many rejections letter I opened? Too many ... until one fine day ... Obstacles are part of the game as long as we see the glass half full it is not a problem. In the May edition of Oprah mazazine writer Finamore put it really well in an article 'Rejected, Lucky for you!' The Crossroadspub: The Pub with no beer, but plenty of spirit and dreamers like Jozef Imrich Digest: For the first time in history, electronic sites andpublishers such as ABCTales, Writtenbyme, the CrossroadsPub can offer readers an opportunity to hear voices from the margins at a speed of light. Dream a little, my friends. We hear often of the sweeping developments that take place across the world. Cold Wars, Hot Wars, economic booms and busts, the rapacious scramble for resources: we hear the warnings of countries, the shouts of other countries in greedy triumph. We rarely see the ways in which these changes impact mere individuals. My small personal voice dreamed and dreamed about telling a story. All dreamers are, however, aware of the Gumperson law of corollary. Gumperson put my dreams to tell my story together in his now famous law which runs like this: "The probability of something happening is in inverse proportion to its desirability." Storytellers cannot live exclusively in an unreal world born of the rejection letters, because when we cease to hope, and dream, and imagine wonderful things to come, our very souls and spirits wither and die. Bookies have a saying. “There are three horses who have never come in win, place, or even show. Their names are Coulda, Woulda, and Shoulda.” Bookies live ”and sometimes die” by the accuracy or inaccuracy of their predictions. The same can said of storytellers. Published authors have said, that telling writers how to get published is the same as trying to explain how to ride a bike. Think you can tell a child how to ride a bike? "It is rather easy," I was once told. The same thing I recently told my daughter Gabriella. "Okay. What do I do?" "Just get on the bike." "How?" "What do you mean, how? Just put your foot on the pedal, swing your leg over the bar and pedal." She tries but falls over and cries: "But I can't! When I try to swing my foot over, the bike falls over." "Okay. Well, don't swing your leg over until you've got better balance. Just lean the bike down a little and step over the bar. Then sit on the seat and pedal." She does as you say and it works ... up to the part where she sits on the seat. She falls over again. "You've got to balance!" you say. "Sure!" she shouts. "But, but, but how do you balance?" Getting published is just like that. You learn to tell stories by sitting on the seat and falling on your face. Then, when you get back up, the reasons supplied inside the rejection letters can help you figure out why you fell down. I am thrilled to be telling you about CrossroadsPub because it is in name and nature a metaphor for what I experienced in my writing life. The existence of a "hidden crossroads" was always with me as I tried to learn how to balance my powerless desire against the powerful letters of rejections. Each of us has our own idea of what our crossroads feel like. I fell, of course. (Ouch) But also I was lifted. (*grin*) The CrossroadsPub is in a process of teaching me how to ride that bike. Above all else, it is to teach writers like me to DREAM the right DREAMS. At the CrossroadsPub, a pub without beer but plenty of spirit, philosophy begins with the assumption of the power of human story. The CrossroadsPub is one of the most successful e-publishing houses on the net. They have very rigorous guidelines on the selection of books they offer. The stories you read at CrossroadsPub provide a wide variety of choices appealing to various audiences. The publisher’s motto states, “if we do not believe a book is worth our investment, we do not publish it." My manuscript was viewed as worth the investment. It had potential because my story was very, very, DIFFERENT. The low DISTRIBUTION cost of epubbing makes it possible for authors like myself to write 'different' books and the people who want that difference to find them. The difference in my story is exactly 'what else' readers want in the books they bought at bookstores. My story is for a very selective audience, it is not for “everybody.” This cannot be done by print authors. I am after the people who will still be talking about my story and showing off their collection of unique CDs in 20 years. I wrote a story that is not mass-market formula. And will be less than $4 to find out for anyone if 'something different' is worth it. The mysterious aspect of success is that those who seek it as such never find it. It is not a destination or a goal, it is written in the ink of imagination and is only found as a byproduct of our ability to dream. Many people spend an unhappy life searching desperately for that which is always within their reach, never realising that it is a treasure not to be found from without, but from within. A storyteller is a storyteller is a storyteller whether they are published or not. Storytellers touch people, inspire listeners, move them to action, change their mind-sets, and open their eyes to imagination and dreams. www.crossroadspub.com represents one and all of us in that collective dreaming pool, known as the human condition ... http://www.creative-journal.com/library/article30.html http://www.dotlit.qut.edu.au/nonfiction.html

Although I work for ABCtales I have to say it has really helped with my personal writing. So much so I am leaving full time employment and going freelance so I can write a novel. I've been seeing so many writers developing and so much talent it has made me want to join in. I went to LA to help to set up The Big Issue and when I first arrived I got really freaked out. You'd walk into a cafe and everyone there would be on their laptops writing their screenplay or novel. I thought it was going to put me off, but it didn't, bringing writers together I think can be very inspiring as writing is such a solitary experience and you need support.

I came to ABC via a very good poetry group, Tortured Poets, on the recommendation of the lovely Liana. I am pretty much a full-time poet these days (you know, poor and threadbare!), so I wouldn't say that ABC has inspired me to write, as such. I suspect that most poets write because they have to, not because they necessarily want to publish. They are inspired to write by the need to get the really important things said, whether anyone else will ever read their work, or not. What ABC Tales has done, however, is to give me another really good forum to test my work out, by airing it amongst some very good writers ( and some very tough cherrypickers!); it has also brightened up my mornings considerably.

Yes ABC it did inspire me to start with (BUT) I feel things are going down hill where my stuff is concerned and I write less now. But hey that's Rock'n' Roll Or may I'm running out of steam.

Yes, it's really encouraged me to write more. The problem is, I really took to heart what I read in some of the discussion threads about editing your work before you posted it...and I'm so neurotic about editing I've spent ages rewriting and so far posted nothing up! Or perhaps it's what I've always suspected is true of a lot of would-be writers: if you don't submit/post/generally offer up to scrutiny, not only can't you succeed, you can't fail either...

Florel....I tend to post it up unedited at first, the first draft, then go back to it a few days later and try to improve it. It usually reads better after that....and today I got my first cherry which was pleasing....take a risk...what can happen ?

florel, You can always look on the positive side; it's got you eriting MORE, even if it's only RE-Writing! I would endore what Martin has said - Go on, have a go!