I’ve been reading a lot of ‘ how-to ’ books on writing novels recently, the majority of them talk about creating an outline even before writing the first draft. For those of us who have attempted this sort of thing it does make sense. Step 1: Create and outline of your story, know where and when everything will happen. Step 2: Write your first draft, don’t worry about spelling mistakes or typo’s just let your creative voice have free reign so you can get the story out there. As Joanna Penn says ‘ splurge on words and ideas ’ in this first draft. Step 3: Spent time editing. That is using your critical voice, correcting the spelling mistakes and typo’s, rewriting and polishing the story. The problem is that we spend a lot of time on step 1 and never seem to be able to finish.

The three  Shadow World  short stories have proven to be quite popular on this blog and I thank you for your interest. I have moved this series of short stories to my  Wattpad  profile. You can read them   HERE . I would really appreciate if you would ' vote ' on each chapter. To do this just tap or click on the star icon. Doing this will support my work by getting it out to more people. If you never heard of  Wattpad  before, don't worry you can read my stories on the same device you are currently viewing my website.   Wattpad  it is community for readers. It also helps writers to publish stories in so many different genres. It aims to create social communities around stories for both amateur and established writers. When I was younger I tried my hand at writing short stories, but gave up before turning 20. You can find a shorten version of why in this article . I thought I had lost all of this work until rece...