This is going to be a short one tonight guys. This post is about the struggle that I think all writers suffer from. It's the urge that all writers feel when they sit down to write, the urge to watch youtube videos.

Now I am not sure why this is, I don't think anyone does but every time I sit down to do some good quality writing I find my self drawn to youtube.

It's not like I am even watching useful videos like stuff posted by other authors it's usually random fail videos or something of the sort.

But hey what are you going to do about it right?

So how I got started with my writing. I wish it could be an epic story about a young man being struck by inspiration and writing down an entire outline and then writing his story in just a few short days. But nope, that's not what happened.

Arvain started out as an idea for a single novel and one day I just started writing, no real out line or direction for where I wanted it to go. Then a few chapters in I realized that all my studying and research for my novel was no good if I wasn't writing it down! Big suprise there.

But then I hit another wall. Time. When I first started writing I was engaged and planning a wedding. So I might write a page or two a month. When I started taking it serous my wife and I found out we were pregnant and boom all my free time gone.

So I settled for one complete page a day and two on my days off of work. It takes me about a week to finish a chapter but it works for my schedule!

Ok so an agent, the rare, highly saught after and almost never found, agent. The reason that I lost a good solid 3 years off of my life. Agents are the stepping stone between an Indie author and a Traditional author. They bridge the gap between the common lowly folk, aka us, and th holy high class, aka the publishers.
So as you can tell i am not the biggest fan of agents but i have my reasons that i will explain and they are probably not the reasons you might expect.
Now before i get to my feelings on literary agents

Ok so without a doubt the number one asked question. Where did you come up with the idea for your book. Its right up there with "I could write a book but i just dont have the time." but i think it best that we cross that bridge another time.
    So where did the idea for my book come from? Well to be honest with you it came from the same place that all my ideas come from....my head. Yup thats about it. You know when your supposed to be listening to your teacher or boss talk about something important and you are lost in la la land day dreaming about whales growing wings and flying through the sky? Thats the same place my idea came from i just wrote it down. 
    Now there was a lot more work into then that but lets not get ahead of ourselves we are talking about the basic idea for a book. So the idea for Arvain really just popped into my head one day and i loved the idea. I used to stay up and make up stories to help my wife sleep and many of the basic ideas for Arvain came out of those stories. 
    The idea for Arvain in its simplest form was just that, simple. When i listen to authors talk about how they came up with their entire book, character names back stories and everything, in a matter of just a simple thought, i either call bs or they are the greatest thinkers of all time. It took me months to hash out the basic premiss for Arvain and back then it was going to be a stand alone novel. 
    To get to the "how" part of the question. How did i come up with the idea for my book? I thought a lot, i did research a lot. I bought numerous books on dragon anatomy and i just wrote down every random thought that came into my head.
    To be honest it was kind of like a potter throwing clay onto his wheel and constantly adding and taking away clay until the shape of his pot starts to form out of the muck. I spent months just preparing for writing before i ever started writing and sadly it wasn't until half way through THe Broken Scale that i realized it would propably be a good idea if i outlined the rest of the book before i wrote it down.

So thats about it i will try to post again tomorrow afternoon so hope to see you there!!
    

Ok so in the previous post I talked about how I first got into writing but I realized it might be a good idea to do a quick back story of my love for books.

Books.....man I love them.

I have always loved reading, when I was a child in grade school I actually looked forward to doing book reports.

Now I just recently turned 25 so I was not raised on any great American classic novels or any really stand out novels. I read anything that I came across. I was raised on military basses in Germany before online shopping was big so getting my young hands on any best sellers was not going to happen. But I was able to read a series called Everworld, which was my first real introduction to fantasy writing.

But it wasn't until I was a little older that I became completley lost in the world of lititure.

I was reading a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, about two weeks after it had come out because my grandma sent it to me in Germany. I was waiting on my shower water to warm up so i decided to sit down on the edge of the tub and read a little while I waited.

I was reading the part where Harry was trying to solve the golden egg in the prefect bathroom and I had gotten lost in the reading do when I looked up my bathroom was covered in steam and for a split second I thought I was in hogwarts.

It was a crazy moment for me and something that I have never forgotten.

So ya that's really about it in a nut shell so I am going to head off the bed and tomorrow I will try to answer the one question that every author has been asked since the beginning of time. "Where did the idea for my novel come from"

So where to begin? Is the beginning really the best place? I am not sure but I will start with how I got into writing. Now this may come as a shock to everyone but I got interested in writing because of books. I love to read, always have and always will I assume. So when I started writing it was my wife, then girlfriend, who suggested it. I used to complain about things I did not like in other books and she finally got tired of it and said why not try to writ your own book? A few years later we are here.