Apprenticeship

[sethp]

I need for someone to take me on as an apprentice and run me through the gamit of excersises to get me ready to write my first novel.

Who want's to take me under thier wings?

I intent to start writing mid year...probably the summer. I need grammer, vocabulary, outlining ..everything. take me in and make me an author! Please! I beg of you!

at least ready some of my 32 stories and give me feed back. mOst of those where excersises in actually writing, and perspective and using adjectives and dialog.

Help Me! I have the talent i know it ..but I'm just too raw! add me to yahoo messenger at oregonsethp@yahoo.com and command me to write!

Sethp

 

[sethp]

somebody please!

Help. Think of it as a grand experiment. can you make a schmuck and a hack a world class writer in just 6 short months?? Think of the fame and fortune that would come your way if you could!

 

[sethp]

oh no!

I've been abandoned to the eastern front of lit. Will no one take me in and teach me a skill in which to vent my tortured soul?

 

[sethp]

Apprentice

Hey this isn't celebrity apprentice with donald trump,...I'm talking like indentured servant like in the middle ages!

 

[sethp]

throwing myself at your mercy

I am and lay planked out on the ground in the rain with pen in hand. scribbling meaningless dialogue in the mud and muttering outdated axioms to the old women as they pass me by glaring at me condescendingly, some of them spitting on me.

 

[sethp]

I rise...

into a pushup position, though not intending to excerise this morning. I kneel and plead loudly to all who will here it. "Is not one among you cut of the cloth of the olde masters?" "Is not there one who would pass his craft onto another?" I stand now glaring through rain soaked eyes, fists clenching and ready to vent my rage.

 

[Xelebes]

I don't know if anyone here has got their journeyman ticket yet.

 

[sethp]

you hear me!

I see you hear me and feel me and loathe me and despise me! I see you seeing me in eyes not accostumed to hearing truth and pain that marries with truth and drives ice daggers deep into your souls but have you the penchant to passs on truth and pull youselves up to a higher position in your fetid life that stinks like dung and is cold like the fear like ice crystals in your vians?

 

[sethp]

Mocked ...

by a little blue alien, but alien to what? Are you alien to truth? Are you alien to intelligence? Are you alien to creativity and wholesomeness and to the great, though admittadly amature works of the living lit god Sethp??

Well are you then you little blue creep that creeps up behind me and drives the knife hilt deep in my back and scoffs at my pleas for apprenticeship?

Well who will teach me?

 

[sethp]

Sacrifice

I pledge to sacrifice my stories for the good of the apprenticeship! what more but my eyes forked out of the sockets that hold them there or to slice my ear off like van gogh? Would that make you happy? To bath in my blood as I spasm on the ground in pain giving you the my body parts so that you can sell them on the black market and my only hope is that you let me keep one eye and one ear and one hand so that I can learn and write that's it that's all one man can ask!

 

[TxRad]

First off you need to quit talking to yourself, not to mention talking to the little blue alien thingy.

As for making you a writer, I think most of us here are trying to do the same thing for ourselves. So join the party.

 

[sethp]

Thanks!

I understand that. but I need more than that. I nee tutalige? damn wish I could spell but that's what proofreading and spell checking ar for.

 

[sethp]

bump!

bump!

sometimes you just have to bump!

 

[sethp]

bump again

come on people read this and respond! now! do it!

 

[oggbashan]

You are asking in the wrong forum.

You need an editor - try the Editors Forum.

You could go to NaNoWriMo - they have pages of advice about how to start writing The Novel.

Og

 

[sethp]

So he explained himself...

Please, sit here awhile and open your ears to me. I mean really hear me and look at me when I talk to you. In the olde tymes, back before the pope had lost his power and the plague was still a fresh memory to all, there was a revival and a birthing of civilization that carries on until this day now that we bask in the sun in. This earlier tyme was where the great painters and artisans unmatched today were born. You had a choice if this was your path. You either studied hard and then did whatever you could to become one of these gods of the earth's apprentices. sometimes they took on mulittudes of apprentices, many of which only ever became servants but still they toiled long into the night for this hope and work hard they did.

An Editor? Nay! A teacher yes. A teacher in that michalangelo taught his craft to those who sought to sculpt..in the way that leonardo taught his knowledge and in the way that davinci passed on his wisdom..in the way that socrates taught his pupils and in the way that shakespeare had his followers..the only true way to learn is thru apprentice ship...

speak not to me of editors and proofreaders and forums that is the way of the fool! but speak to me of teachers and students and I will be the latter...

 

[sethp]

anyone anyone?

where are you guys? the great authors who love to teach tards like me?

 

[sethp]

I see

I've been outcast like a self publisher in a room of published authors.. like a leper at a porn convention...like bill mahrer at college. drats!

 

[sr71plt]

It looks to me like you have quite a bit of work to do on your own before looking for a mentor. You can learn a lot on your own before the mentor stage by buying and using a good dictionary (preferrably Webster’s Collegiate, edition 11, if you are writing in the United States)—even in your postings to the forum—and buying and aborbing a good basic grammar book (some print help on that given below—I posted a URL list earlier in response to one of your threads).

When you are ready for a writing mentor, join a writers support group and, if possible, request direct help from an experienced member of the group; attend writing classes and, if possible, request direct help from the instructor or another experienced student in the class; read books on writing; attend writer’s conferences and network there; or connect with other writers either located near you or on line.

Online writers groups can be found at http://www.WritersBBS.com (which provides workshops to help in becoming a better writer) and http://www.all-story.com/index.cgi (which provides different boards for short stories, novellas, poetry, screenplays).


Dictionaries

Most publishers use the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (the currently is the 11th edition, although a new edition may be coming out soon) as their authority on word spelling. Webster’s is a "descriptive" dictionary, in that it neutrally describes "how" words are defined and doesn’t help much in making choices whether those words are generally accepted in formal writing.

The second-most used dictionary is the latest edition of the American Heritage college dictionary (currently the third). This dictionary is a "prescriptive" dictionary in that it isn’t as quick as Webster’s in accepting slang and gives the writer a better idea of whether and how words are acceptable for use in formal writing.

British written English has some striking differences from American written English. The Oxford Dictionary


Useful General Grammar, Style, and Word Usage Aids

The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996).

Theodore M. Bernstein, The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (Atheneum, 1965).

David Daniels and Barbara Daniels, HarperCollins College Outline: English Grammar (HarperCollins, 1991).

Harriet Diamond and Phyllis Dutwin. Grammar in Plain English, (Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. 1996).

Eugene Ehrlich, Schaum’s Outline of Theory and Problems of Punctuation, Capitalization, and Spelling, second edition (McGraw Hill, 1987).

Joanne Feierman, Action Grammar (Simon & Shuster, 1995).

H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, second edition (Oxford University Press, 1996). There’s a newer edition out than this, but most of the Fowler material has disappeared from this edition, and it hasn’t received good reviews.

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed (Times Books, 1984).

Thomas S. Kane, The New Oxford Guide to Writing (Oxford University Press, 1998). This is a standard for British usage.

The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage (HarperCollins, 1994).

Theodore A. Rees Cheney, Getting the Words Right (Writer’s Digest Books, 1995).

Harry Shaw, Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions (McGraw Hill, 1987).

Sol Stein, Stein on Writing (Griffin Trade Paperback, 2000).

Ann Stilman, Grammatically Correct (Writer’s Digest Books, 1997).

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (Allen and Bacon, 2000). This is the writer’s aide recommended by Literotica.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, fifth edition (HarperCollins, 1994).


Writing Aids: Print

Lawrence Block, Writing the Novel from Plot to Print (Writer’s Digest Books, 1979)

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction (Pearson Longman, 6th edition, 2002)

Orson Scott Card, Characters & Viewpoint (Writer’s Digest Books)

Ansen Dibell, Plot (Writer’s Digest Books, 1999)

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (Shambhala, 1986)

Diana Hacker, A Writer’s Reference: Fourth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001)

Handbook of Short Story Writing, preface by Joyce Carol Oates, (Writer’s Digest Books, 1986)

Stephen King, On Writing (Pocket Books, 2002)

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (Anchor, 1995)

Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees (Riverhead Books, 2001)

Noah Lukeman, The Plot Thickens (St. Martin’s, 2003)

Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel (Writer’s Digest Books, 2003)

Robert McKee, Story (Regan Books, 1997)

Richard Rhodes, How to Write (Quill, 1996)

Sol Stein, How to Grow a Novel (St. Martin’s Press, 2002)

Sol Stein, Stein on Writing (Griffin Trade, 2000)

Dwight Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer (University of Oklahoma Press, 1982)

Joseph P. Williams, Style (University of Chicago Press, 1995)

Albert Zuckerman, Writing the Blockbuster Novel (Writers Digest Books, 2002)

 

[jomar]

sethp

You're cracking me up. And boy, do I need a laugh.

 

[sethp]

at least i'm good for something

well i'm glad at least i'm good for something! damn! ok thanks again for the info sr71plt ! it's good and I need it. I guess there are no apprenticeships on lit! crap!

Ok so....I think i'll just go to the library and get a writing book with excersises and then! write my famous novel during the summer! you guys just wait. I am good and my fame will know no bounds! women will weep when they see me and I'll drink the blood of those I destroy when I rise to the top.

what is best in life you may ask?

to crush your enemies and see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of the women! That's what!

Sethp

 

[sethp]

But I am..

Still open to a mentor?

 

[3113]

The problem with old fashioned apprenticeship is that it require that we, supposed "masters" let you sleep in our homes, eat at our table and live with our family while we teach you our.... (looks both ways) secrets!

You expect any writer to allow someone to enter their space like that? Peer over their shoulder while they write?

In addition, we'd have to get recommenced for our tutelage. That is, your ass would belong to us and you pay us back with work for our work. That doesn't quite work so well if you can't spell. I mean, we can't say, "Write this chapter for me!" as a blacksmith might say, "Hammer out these horseshoes for me!"

Seriously, though, there are some excellent writer's workshops that we can direct you to if you're really aiming to learn the craft--spelling and grammar not included. I'm afraid, like the rest of us, you're on your own there.

What kind of genre are you writing? This would help us advise you on writers workshops--which I guarantee you will be far more effective in kicking your ass and getting you to write that novel than an internet apprenticeship where your, er, master can just ignore your e-mails

 

[sethp]

The problem with old fashioned apprenticeship is that it require that we, supposed "masters" let you sleep in our homes, eat at our table and live with our family while we teach you our.... (looks both ways) secrets!

You expect any writer to allow someone to enter their space like that? Peer over their shoulder while they write?

In addition, we'd have to get recommenced for our tutelage. That is, your ass would belong to us and you pay us back with work for our work. That doesn't quite work so well if you can't spell. I mean, we can't say, "Write this chapter for me!" as a blacksmith might say, "Hammer out these horseshoes for me!"

Seriously, though, there are some excellent writer's workshops that we can direct you to if you're really aiming to learn the craft--spelling and grammar not included. I'm afraid, like the rest of us, you're on your own there.

What kind of genre are you writing? This would help us advise you on writers workshops--which I guarantee you will be far more effective in kicking your ass and getting you to write that novel than an internet apprenticeship where your, er, master can just ignore your e-mails

Thank you! now that was a great post! well fantasy/erotica and a biography.

First I want to write a good short story and have it published in a collection of some sort.

Then I have a couple of erotic/fantasy novels in me and

then I have my biography but it has to be in a certain style ond perspective and lastly

a couple of fiction/success books ala the holy man or the celestine prophecy.

what do you think?

 

[3113]

Thank you! now that was a great post! well fantasy/erotica and a biography.

First I want to write a good short story and have it published in a collection of some sort.

Then I have a couple of erotic/fantasy novels in me and

then I have my biography but it has to be in a certain style ond perspective and lastly

a couple of fiction/success books ala the holy man or the celestine prophecy.

what do you think?

Okay. As you mentioned that you're going to get started on that novel Mid-year (is that correct)? then you might be right for this workshop: Clarion

A six week course that will turn you into a writer if it doesn't kill you. The 2008 workshop deadline is past, but they'll be taking applicants for the next workshop (2009) in September. That gives you time to write short stories and start on the novel to bring with you there. You don't come with nothing to Clarion, you come fiction to work on.

Edited to add: it also gives you time to get together the money and time off. This is six-weeks and you can't be doing anything else. It's all writing all the time.

That's a start. I'm looking into a possible on-line teacher as well....