Erstwhile Greetings

Hello, and welcome to my class. Unfortunately, the class is this blog (for now) but will hopefully become solid one day in the near future.

I am Matthew Rain, writer, poet, film buff, and many other things. But for now, I'm simply a teacher, passing on knowledge that has been passed onto me, by great writing souls like Dickens, Baum and Kenneth Williams. I won't go on about my stuff too much for the moment, but feel free to google me. 'To Wit a Dalek' was mine, a ground breaking Doctor Who novel that define the genre at the time, but then the new series came along and pissed on it, and 'Push it to the Summit', that was voted story of the day on a Science Fiction yahoo group called 'Star Crusaders against the Cozmic Nazis'.

But perhaps we should start things off with the basics. If you want to be a writer, you actually have to write something. No half measures, actually start writing things down. Not just anything, actually try and think of a story. Perhaps even start telling a story you didn't think of, and then cleverly tweak it to make it your own. I for example took the entire story of Star Wars and turned it into a thriller about a spy named Solo Dereck. It wasn't publishable, but still, it was something new, and maybe even better than Star Wars. Well, better than that detritus Lucas passed off as prequels.

Grammar isn't that important. A lot of so called 'writers', some of which are 'friends' of mine would say that grammar is one of the first things you need to know as a writer. It's not. It's just something that divides up the words, but it is these droplets of imagination (the words) that make the story come to life in the poor sap you have reading your stuff. Grammar is like a corrugated iron shed in a beautiful summer garden, filled with petals and rare slowers. The shed is just in the way. So is the grammar. Besides you could probably get a word programme or your mum or something to sort it out afterwards.

There's just something to get your started. In the coming months, and years, expect more sound advice, extracts of my being, as well as interviews with other writers, pieces of my own writing so you can see how a published author writes, and information about the 'How to Write Not Wrong' podcast, that will serve as an audio attachment and guide through my writing journey, and yours too. Although, eventually I imagine the blog will be the attachment. But when I get my teaching job I might just jack it in altogether.

I'm on facebook, twitter, and myspace. Feel free to get in touch if you need some help, but not if your just lonely or something, I'm not really interested.

But do take care. Go write.
Matthew Rain