Budding writers

[jratz91]

I have a feeling Ananth has had this asked a lot, but I have a question here that is actually about writing.  There's a lot of people out there that are inspired by your work and want to write, but we always think our writing is horrible and start going "[CENSORED] it!  This sucks!" then just kind of stop before they even really get criticism and see what others think.  So, what advice would you give to us about writing?  Where should we start?  How do we start?

[AbhorsenAube]

I had the same question and had no replies after a while. Though I am not nearly as accomplished as Ananth I give what little help I can. A great way to get criticism without putting your head in the guillotine is to start get with a group of fellow writers. This helps tremendously. I started a group at my college and we called ourselves the Inklings in honor of the group that included Tolkien, C.S Lewis and many other famous fiction writers. We even started meeting at our local pub down the road. As for getting yourself recognized, well there's the internet. Blogs are the rage for just about anything. I prefer old fashion articles in local papers. I had a small weekly story published in my college paper for a little over two months before I got tired of it and killed the heroine. It was a great experience though and I found out how ruthless fan's can be, even though I probably only had about 10.
I hope this helped.