Out of Excuses

I plan to start posting about writing on this blog, but first, some context.

I have long been an aspiring writer of fantasy. I suppose it comes from being an avid reader from a relatively early age, from a first introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien and Larry Niven (God bless you, Dad) - and from always having had an urge to create (thank you, Mum). I had dabbled with writing, written short stories and the first novel in a trilogy. That took the best part of 15 years (on and off, of course!!) - it's now 225,000 words and not fit for publication. How do I know that? Because about 3 years ago I discovered the excellent Writing Excuses podcast.

I am a long time fan of Robert Jordan and his excellent Wheel of Time series. With the sad passing of Mr. Jordan, some bloke called Brandon Sanderson was brought in to write the last book from Mr. Jordan's notes. Well, one book became three, but it was clear straight away on reading The Gathering Storm, that this Sanderson fellow warranted further investigation. Having read his Mistborn books and started on the other Cosmere series, I am now an big fan, and it was a short step from Brandon's website to Writing Excuses (WE), the excellent and deservedly award-winning podcast for aspiring writers by Sanderson and his friends Dan Wells (horror writer); Howard Tayler (cartoonist and now published author) and Hugo Award winning ;o) Mary Robinette Kowal (author and puppeteer).

Writing Excuses is a hugely useful, entertaining and educational weekly podcast, now in its ninth season, which exposes listeners to the sage advice and wealth of experience of the casters, but also to the limitless expertise of their guests, who appear from time to time to discuss specialist subjects, as it were. I cannot began to relate how much I have learned about writing from this quite rightly lauded podcast. That learning alone is worth its weight in gold, but I have