Purpose of this blog

My name is Craig Reed and I am a writer.

Well, I like to think of myself as a writer. Whether or not anyone else thinks I am is up in the air.

I have been an avid reader for about the time I was four, more years ago then I care to remember. Over the years I wrote fanfiction, mostly in anime and Battletech. But I’ve finally decided to take the big plunge and write stories set in my own universe. I have had some success writing stories for the Battlecorps site (Sixteen E-published stories as of this blog), but until things get straightened out with the Battletech novels, there’s no way I’m even going to get a shot at writing one.

I have a couple of partially completed urban fantasy novels done, one I wrote for the NoWriNoMo event in November (I managed 42,000 words before a looming deadline with a Battlecorps story forced me to chose, and I chose the short story). But this isn’t one of those. I expect I will take what I learn from this novel and apply it to both of them to get them back on track.

So, it’s time to branch out and see if I can write that novel, for real. That’s the purpose of this blog, to chronicle my efforts, from start to (hopefully) the end of of the project. I expect that it will be part progress journal, part bitch and moan session, part kick in the ass, and part cry for help....

I have never sat down and planned out a novel before. I tend to write my fanfiction "off-the-cuff", with frequent consultations of source material. But there is no "source material" for me to support me, but what comes from my brain. To do that, I have to plan this out before I can put one word down of the story.
I expect this to be a journey. Maybe not a quick one, but a lot of what I do for this first novel is going to be trial and error. If you read this, maybe you can learn for my mistakes, or offer help when I hit my head against a wall.

Willing to come along?

Craig