Frewin Jones: Traveling for Free!

Writing is a never-ending journey of fun and discovery, where you can take yourself and your characters to any place you choose in the entire universe—or even out of it, if you want to write about people with wings and about mythical creatures and magic spells in worlds where no one but you has ever been. Wherever you want to go, it'll cost you nothing but time, and it needs no fuel other than your imagination.

For me, the first rule of writing is not "write what you know about," but instead, "write about whatever inspires you." Just enjoy yourself. Then again, if you're writing stuff that you'd like other people to read and enjoy, you'll probably need someone to whom you can show your work, but not necessarily a friend or relative—friends and relatives will usually want to be kind and polite; they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear. What you need is someone who will be honest with you and whose opinion you can trust. Do you know someone you could show your writing to and whose opinion you would trust and value?

Writing is such a personal thing that it's really hard to have to deal with criticism, but you'll learn a lot more from being told what's wrong with something that you've written than you ever will from being told that everything you write is totally amazing.

Can you cope with criticism? Can you listen to other people's opinions and change a story you've written to accommodate new ideas?

And what about those ideas—where do they come from? That's often the first question people ask writers—where do you get your ideas?? So—where do you get your ideas?

Frewin Jones
Author of The Faerie Path