Admittedly the site's still primarily images-oriented, but the literature community has come a long way in the past few years, and is no longer the redheaded stepchild sitting by itself off in the corner.

It doesn't cost you anything to poke your head around; joining's free, and all the paid membership buys you is a few bells and whistles.

Ha! You're not the only one.

I used to write sci-fi short stories, but I haven't written anything for many years now. I did publish a couple of stories online once (unpaid), but they were set in a shared universe with some quite specific rules, so for people who don't know that universe, they might be rather confusing. Still, if anyone wants to check them out, here they are:

Sociology Experiment
Deus Ex Machina

Be advised that some devout Christians may find those stories offensive. As I don't write to offend anyone, I think it's only fair to warn people beforehand.

I don't even know how to write. My super intelligent cat Mr. Mojo van Peebles writes these posts for me.

I do like to write, but only non-fiction. I love writing columns for the newspaper of the organisation I work for or write a lecture. My work is stepping up for the interests of people who, like me, are mentally ill and I like writing. These things combine well. In over an hour, I have to go to a school for students who are studying to become creative therapists, to give a lecture about the client perspective on their job. I do this with my life's story as basis for stipulating some important themes in working with people who are mentally ill and how we like to be treated. That's the things I like to write: they need to be functional, not just entertain. I lack the creativity for fiction. My next column will be about some positive experiences I had in phoning with an institition that pays my social benefit. In these time of worries and budget cuts, it's good to look at positive things as well.

Cats. The cats are taking over the earth, I tell you! They're taking over !

Just checking, but you're not a cat are you? :-)

I'm a member of my university's film club, and today we're submitting scripts. I wrote a noir short film about a private detective working out of his dorm room.

Interesting, man. I'm writing a sci-fi epic for the past 3 years now (450 pages as we speak). It may also offends all sort of religious people but it's not its purpose to do so. My work is trully aimed at the open minded people out there. Atheists will find its content too religious centered and religious people will see it as blasphemy.

The tale sets out to answer the ultimate question: What lies beyond death? The answer is in a whole new sci-fi world where angels exist but the only difference between us and them is mostly in the technology. The angelic race is dying and humanity is their last hope of mantaining their own legacy, seeing we are their own creation.

Anyone and anything that dies has their "souls" collected and sent to be processed and selected for ressurection in "Heavens" (or Hell). This is another war fought on the spiritual grounds by both sides where the soul's destination is actually determined by the content of the soul itself, both sides can only "manipulate" it to make a decision.

Notice I said "anything" so, yes, even animals can be ressurected in humanoid form (A wolf, for example, will be brought back in a "werewolf" form). The key differences between humans and non-humans is the free will. Animals cannot make choices on their own unless by instinct.

Everything above is far more complex than I described here of course. Also, there's no shortage of awesome battles and interesting characters.

The only problem is my mother togue is not English, so...

Care to post it?
That was more or less my story, too. I loved writing when I was a kid. When I got out of school, had a few really good writing classes/profs, wasn't married and had some real free time, I wrote a TON. I probably write 1/50th of what I wrote back then (busy with work, marriage and 3 kids). But I still find the time to hammer out some books from time to time.

So, you may have many good years of fiction writing left!

F*ck it, I'm gonna go for it and start writing all these down. I talked to my wife about this, her reaction was something along the lines "don't bother, you're not gonna finish it anyway. Also what's the point in writing if you're not going to make any money out of it?"

She may have some issues with my constant babbling about the storyline and the characters :D

But yes, I thought about giving up, but somehow this is not letting go. I constantly get new stuff in my head, small scenes, character reactions, all these kinds of things. Is this normal, or am I finally losing my mind?

Also, with this plethora of ideas and scenes, I don't know where to start. Should I just write them down in the order they appear in my mind, or should I try to be consistent with the story from the very beginning?

Set a goal and start from there. I did this:

1) What the book will be about?
2) Where it will end? (you don't need to know HOW but WHERE)
3) Write as you go and don't try to be overly consistent. The best parts on my history are the gaps that I had to fill after I've got to a point where I had to ask myself: "Wait, this doesn't make sense, because back there THAT happened." Then, instead of getting frustrated I had to rewrite the whole thing, I just used that to my advantage and created a whole new motive for that inconsistency to happen and in the end it made perfect sense.
4) Don't bother with people criticising your work. If you are proud of it, you're doing a good job despite what people say.

I used to write. Nothing special nor for others consumption... well, usually

Mainly used to write scenes or snippets of a story as it came into my mind

I occasionally used to write erotica as well

Wrote a three-part Reiki manual (had references and snippets included that weren't mine as well)

Do you have any tips on writing? Or do you have any tips on literature about writing? Something like "Writing for dummies" or so. I'd like to capture some of my ideas or weird dreams i sometimes have but i fail to even begin because i'm stuck on the idea of having no clue how to write it and how to begin etc.
I've written a lot of pages on various stuff when i was a university student, but that was the same thing that i didn't know how to begin and i was delaying the work thinking that i don't know what to write and so on, but the deadline of submitting the papers and theses made me do it eventually. There is no deadline with the "free" writing though. :)

No, I'm not, but everywhere I go where people have cat's they want to snuggle in my lap as if it's their throne. So yeah, they rule me.