Hello, there, and thanks for stopping by! My name is Tiyana (pronounced tee-ah-nuh/nah), and I am an aspiring fantasy novelist, currently editing my beast-of-a-first-novel as we speak. I have been called “quirky” by those who follow me, which would explain the whimsical background design, so you can expect a colorful voice on this blog.
Currently I plan to post something new on the 2nd/3rd Wednesday of every month, though sometimes I might do more, if the mood strikes. I’ve gotten away from constant posts, simply because sometimes I might not have anything new and interesting that’s writing-related on my mind!
Seven and a Half First Drafts exists for a few reasons:
- as a resource for other aspiring writers;
- to discuss writer-ly topics with like-minded individuals; and finally
- because it can!
First, I guess I should explain the title.
“Seven and a half first drafts” is about how many experimental drafts I went through before I really began to grasp how novel-writing is supposed to work–or rather how my novel was supposed to work. Lots of people just trunk their novels if they don’t work out the first few times around and go off and work on new projects, but me… I was determined it could work, if only I could find the way. (You can read a bit about how I got started on it, here, and some of the process I went through to help me discover my story, here, if you’re interested.) It’s the only book I want to write at the moment because there are five others I have ideas for that all hinge upon this first one. I’m editing the first now–yet another learning experience–and if I can’t sell it to a publisher when it’s ready then I’ll probably consider going the self-published route.
The resource part is primarily my Links For Writers page, in which I’ve complied a list of writing articles that have been useful to me in learning the writing craft. The links are organized alphabetically by topics such as “Characters” or “Genre” to make it easier to browse through. There is just a lot of free information on the Internet these days, so I think it’s nice to have a go-to list of useful links all in one place.
As for blog content, I am primarily interested in novel-writing within the context of fantasy and/or speculative fiction, though not all of what I discuss will be limited to these things; I also like to talk about music, art and movies, as well, because they are great sources of inspiration and storytelling techniques. Even so, I believe that core storytelling principles and elements are the same no matter whether you write epic novels, microfiction or anything in between!
I do look forward to hearing from other writers/storytellers out there and learning from your experiences, as well.
So until next time…
~Tiyana
On Site Navigation:
It bugs me when I can’t find stuff on a website, so I tried to keep this in mind when I first set up this blog. There are a few ways to get around here:
- Search–if you kind of know what you’re looking for, you can try using the search engine in the top right-hand corner
- Key Words–if you’re looking for a particular category, then this is the way to go
- Blog Entries–you can browse specifically by month, if you’d like to see some of my earlier entries
- The Good Old-Fashioned Way–you know, scrolling and randomly clicking whatever happens to catch your roaming eye
Anyways, I hope this helps!
