Writing Craft: An Intro

Writing Craft: An Intro

Friends, I would like to begin going through my journey of learning and researching and ultimately mastering writing craft. I'd love to return to university and pursue a degree in English or English literature or even just take a creative writing course. However, due to medical reasons, right now that's not possible in my life. So I'm going to be teaching myself creative writing and ultimately working to publish my novels. Now, I do come from an academic background, throughout school I excelled in English and reading, actually measuring off the charts in linguistics and reading comprehension. Throughout my middle school and high school years, I was in Honors courses and continued to excel in English and writing in college. I have also been working in the field of publishing for some time. I'm a freelance editor and also an editor for a small publishing company.  It's just now that I'm finally embarking on the path to publishing the stories which have been living in my head for months and some for many years.

What I would like to do is share with you not only the titles of the books that I chose to study from but why I chose those particular texts, what I thought about them and in the end, how they have helped me in my writing or if they have not helped in any way. I will be brutally honest about the works I chose to study from, as not only do I want to produce high-quality work and stories for all of you, my dear readers. I also want to help other aspiring writers or folks who, like me, can’t afford a college education, to learn writing craft, to master it and ultimately to see our stories become true masterpieces that will touch the lives of so many.

To me, writing is not about making money or immortalizing my name (actually I’m using a pen name, Marie Greaves is merely a part of the real individual behind the words).  Writing is about creativity, telling stories, helping the characters that come to life so vividly in my head, to come alive on the page and most importantly alive in your hearts. Writing is about love, passion, strife, struggle, etc., it’s about coming into another world and leaving all of your troubles behind or just taking a break from the everyday life. To come into another individual’s life and finding yourself in that individual (the characters) and being able to relate to them. That’s just some of the reasons why I write and why I want to get my stories out to all of you.

So as I’ve said, I will share with you about the texts I chose to study from, I will also share any websites that I come across, YouTube videos or any and all sources that I come across during this journey. Also, keep in mind studying writing craft and perfecting one's skills does not stop once one has published a book, no it continues. This is a life-long journey, and I welcome you to join me, and I hope in some way my journey will help others.

Love,

Marie

Welcome to Marie's Quill

Welcome to Marie’s Quill

Welcome to my blog and the journey I'm about to begin to becoming a published author. I will admit friends, we are in for quite a ride but I'm so delighted to have you with me on this journey. Each week I will be blogging about learning and studying writing craft, the steps I will take to publishing my books and oh yes, a lot about my books. You'll get all the behind the scenes glimpses, excerpts and release information.

How it all began you might be wondering. Well, it was back in high school, my junior year in honors English Lit class and we were assigned to read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Well, I absolutely fell in love with the book and began grabbing all of the Austen books I could find at our local library. I was not only a fast fan of Ms. Austen, but of the whole Regency and Georgian eras (having learned that the Regency period was a small part of the overall Georgian Era.) I began learning all that I could about both of these fascinating times in England's history.

It wasn't long before stories began living in my head. But I wondered, would people of today be truly interested in reading a romance taken place during this time? Sure it was one thing for Ms. Austen as she lived in that time, but this was the '90's and the 1990's to be exact. Well,  it was a couple of years later during my Freshman year of college that my question was answered when I picked up my first historical romance book that was not considered classic literature and written in our present times. It was a book by Mary Balogh called The Famous Heroine, oh how I fell in love with this genre. I began grabbing all of the historical Regency and Georgian books I could find. Through the years I've read numerous books by a variety of authors and must admit, historical Regency and Georgian romance is still my favorite. So this, dear readers is the genre I've chosen.

For many years I thought about writing off and on, but never really gave it serious thought or thought it possible. I always had a vivid imagination as a child and often times that was stifled by family and even teachers. Never the less, the stories still resided in my head and I'd hear the characters chatting about and as I ferociously read more books, more and more stories came. However, life happened and situations forced me to go into a more secure field (you know what they say about starving artists) and I went into education. I graduated in 2012 with Highest Honors from Post University and entered the world of education (prior to that I've done many other jobs to get by in life, including being a flight attendant, restaurant manager, and office administrator). However, the stories still lived in my head and I often times thought about writing, but again didn’t take it seriously until once again life happened.

After being encouraged by a few author friends and some family members, I've finally decided to give these stories a permanent home and put pen to paper. Yes, I do mean pen to paper, my rough drafts (as you'll learn more about my writing style as we go along) are all hand written in big 5 subject notebooks.

So friends, I welcome you to join me in this journey and be looking for The Wexford Sisters in 2017.

Love,

Marie