Inaugural

Hey friends. Aya here. That is, of course, not my real name, but I'm sure there's enough information on the blog already so that if you really wanted to find out who I was, you could. I bet I could. But that's besides the point.

I am a writer, a writer of fictions. On a journey of epic proportions to make it in this world. How do I want to make it? By writing. I've been writing since I was of wee proportions, and it's kind of the only thing I truly care about. The goal now, is to make it profitable.

I've just graduated with a fancy degree in filmmaking, but I don't know what to do with it. I would prefer to work in TV, but that's a long way off. While I work on getting there, I'm going to write. It's only in the last couple of years that I turned off on the path marked Screenwriting, and I'm still deeply connected to my prosey roots. Writing short stories is how I've survived so far, and screenplays has supposedly been taught to me. Teleplays, however, are buried gold I need to seek and search for.

I never had a writing mentor, and I was really too shy to properly connect in that way with any of my professors, so I'm turning to the internet in my time of need. I already have a Yahoo group documenting progress on what I'm writing, but I'd like to make it more interactive, possibly even create a little writer's ring where we can fortify each other. Want to help me achieve my goals?

Here are my doubts:
I was never taught how to be literary. My short stories are flukes, they have no higher structure or any quality to them that makes them good. I have trouble stretching a story across two pages, and when I do, the pacing is off, the narration is clumsy, and there is no weight to the concept. I also can't write convincing dialogue for the life of me.

In screenplay writing, I'm a legalist. I try to force story into structure rather than let structure evolve with story. I don't know how to sustain a three-act story. The basic construction of my action lines is overly complicated without saying much of importance. I apparently don't know grammar very well.

I don't know how to format, structure, or plain write an episode of television, which is unfortunately precisely what I want to do with my life.

So that's me, a common writer with aspirations. I know I can do it, I just need help in getting there.

-Aya