If it sometimes seems like I have experience beyond my years it is because my mother, a published playwright, has shared with me the writer’s plight from day one. She has been working on her novel since before I was born. In it’s early days it was a radio play produced by the BBC. Now it is finished and in the tinkering phase but she’s been interrupted so many times it’s a testament to her tenacity she is continuing the struggle.

She knows exactly what it’s like to reach the end of your tether, pick up your whole manuscript, toss it down the stairs and start over. She doesn’t recommend doing so to your computer. But typewriters were still hot stuff. unfortunately auto-page numbering was not and she really had no other choice than to begin her new draft on page one.

I started trying to write my first novel when I was nine and got my own computer to practice on when I was eleven. Apple was still a start up and the only reason we could afford one of their products was because we had moved from the UK to California and the Mac Plus was much cheaper in young Silicon Valley than Lancashire, England.

I then lived in central Maine for four years and can tell you why Stephen King is so successful. There is nothing else to do there but write. I don’t remember what my various schools attempted to teach beyond being forced to read Romeo and Juliet twice.* What I do remember is a houseful of books and at least three computers on at all waking hours.

With all the years of practice behind me (24 as of 2011) I’m so used to writing, the world of writing, and what to do, that it took a while for me to realize I lacked a section for beginning writers who want a starting point. So here it is: the basics.

*Dear guy who tried to hit on me using one of Romeo’s lines. Shakespeare was interesting to me in high school because I hadn’t heard the same damn quotes ad nauseum till I could barely stand a single word of anything popular. Next time try Macbeth. It won’t get you any further, but at least it would be interesting.