Another ice palace, even more stunning

[pegkerr]

alisgray just sent me these fantastic pictures of a snow and ice festival in China, with a truly stunning ice palace, and other massive ice sculptures. I've never seen such spectacular ice palace photos. Thanks so much!

Comments

[erukolindo.livejournal.com]

actually i was wondering if you could give me some advice...
i have a few questions, as a person sitting down trying to write a novel in his limited spare time after maintaining a 40/45 hour a week job and raising a 5 year old...

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

What sort of advice are you looking for?

[erukolindo.livejournal.com]

i'm just having trouble actually sitting down and writing.(not counting what little free time i get to do so.) i see the whole story in my head, like a movie, and actually i see the whole story for a continuation (2nd book)as well... but when i sit down to write, i get in patient at the speed the story is taking and end up not writing much at all. it's like i want to get to the end. i also go back and edit ALOT, even though i know your not supposed to til your done. the other thing is, i find outside influences, inspirations rather, trying to leak into my story. i always catch those though. what do you think? thanks for the help.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Sometimes beginning writers worry that their first draft isn't perfect, and so they niggle at it too early, and agonize that it isn't "right." So they don't get anywhere. They think of writing as being like sculpting marble: one slip of the chisel and it's all ruined.

But it's more like sculpting clay. The key is, you have to start by putting your clay on the wheel. You can shape it, add more clay, add more water, work with it. But you can't do anything unless you have clay there to work with.

So just get the words down. Lots of them. You can eventually throw away the ones that don't work, even if it ends up being 80% of them. But get the first draft down first.

As for influences: hey, my second novel is entirely based on someone else's work (The Wild Swans is based on the Hans Christian Andersen story). It didn't matter. I did something different with it. I understand this fear, but don't worry about it. Just get the clay on the wheel.

[erukolindo.livejournal.com]

thank you very much... i'll do my best. let you know how it goes.

Some more which might be useful

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Here are a bunch of links, and you might find some to be useful.

I write SF/Fantasy, and SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) has a number of helpful articles.

blackholly has a list of links for beginning writers here.

Midwest Book Review has an extensive list of resource links for writers.

The best place I've found for reference on the Internet is Refdesk.

There! That should be more than enough information for now.