I guess you want to know if I really know the field I am wriing about, so here is a list of my successes so far: An article (3 whole pages so it wasn't a "space filler") in the best polish computer Magazine called CD-Action. I wrote an article called 9x death about various kinds of deathtypes in computer games. Two letters and one post from their forum were printed in CD-Action in a veeery popular section with letters (it's more like a section with jokes) from the readers. My two letters were original and funny/stupid enough to be considered as one of the best in CD-Action's history. They were also printed in a little book added to one of the issues containing the best letters in the history of CD-Action. I have also published some articles about books in E-zines on the Cover CD of the mentioned earlier magazine. I possess proper proof and can scan the mentioned writings to prove that I really achieved these successes. The magazine CD-Action is being read by over 200 000 people.

Please, don't think I am boasting here. I am sharing my experiences so you can be even better than me one day. Even if I can't become popular, maybe you'll manage to achieve this goal.

I am currently working on two novels: "Inquilibrium" [link]
and "Apostol i poszedl" ("Dis-ciple is gone")

The links to the previous issues of this series of articles can be found on the bottom of this article, just like links to my other articles (a kind of articles that never become outdated, mostly tutorials, guides and articles to help you in some way). Please, have a look. So far most of them received 5-6 favs.
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THE FIFTH ISSUE OF ABC OF STYLE

Rule no.20:"Whenever you write complex sentences be sure to finish them. You often lose track on what you're writing about"

This may seem obvious, but it's one of the reasons why re-reading your manuscript at least once is so important. You can digress from the topic and leave a sentence unfinished. This happened to me when I wrote "Dis-ciple is gone" for the first time. I would have to search for the notebook to translate the example from my first story, but I think that the sentence I created will show you what I mean:

"He took the axe, that the monster dropped when he hit it with a rock, that has fallen of the wall of the abandoned factory and that, thanks to a lucky coincidence, was lying in the dead end he ran into.(...)"

The bold part of the sentence remained unfinished but the sentence is long enough to overlook this error. You don't want to let the book agent or publisher read such sentences, do you?
Although complex and correct sentences are a proof that you can write quite well (and not like He was old. And he hd a son that was evil. The son wanted to get rid of him.) but sometimes it's better to use shorter sentences so the reader can understand what you mean. If you don't have much experience in describing architectural characteristics of a building, try to describe it so, that the reader can see it. And I will write it again. Research can help you spare words: instead of writing "he looked at the bow formed spot located above the passage leading to the bed room" you can write "he looked at the arch of the passage lading to the bed room." Of course using proper nomenclature (names) will make the sentence shorter and will make it sound trivial, but instead of describing something what can be described with one word, you can concentrate on describing the material used for the arch or the ornaments and frescos. Imagine how long a sentence would have to be if humans wouldn't understand the meaning of the word "fire". You would have to cover a whole page with describing the effect of fire.

Oh, and one more thing. It happens often to me that I want to write a collocation but then decide to use an alike collocation or expression and then forget to delete one part of the collocation and the whole expression consits of two different parts that sound weird.
For example: you want to write "become very close friends" but later change it to "make acquaintances" but because the sentence is long, you didn't notice that "become" is still there and you wrote something like "become very make acquaintances. It's nearly impossible to make an error like this in a short sentence, but in one consisting of multiple parts? Quite possible. I am doing alike errors sometimes even though I am a student on the third grade of a Teacher's College:/

Rule no.21:"When editing the text in a Text processor don't delete the part you don't like immidiately"

You can ask why you shouldn't delete a part of the text you don't like immidiately, but I've got a ready answer. It often happened that I wanted to write a part of a story in a different way, deleted the obsolte part and then wondered if I didn't miss any idea that was used in the previous version. In extreme cases, I can't even remember what I wrote a while ago. Of course, one can always open the uneditet version of the manuscript and look it up or hit "undo", but why bother. I simply hit a few times the enter button and part the obsolete part of the text from the rest and then let it slide down until I used up all the ideas that the previous version of the fragment contained. Sometimes I write a long fragment and then decide to use this idea in the latter part of the book. Do I delete it when it's well written? No, I simply let it slide or copy it to the "unused moments" file. It happened also that I wanted to write a fragment anew, deleted the old one and then hit "undo" just because I couldn't concentrate without having the "sceleton" of teh writing in front of my eyes. When You delete something, there is a risk that your memory will never recall it again. Trust me, I regret that I haven't written down ideas in a notbook earlier.

Rule no.22:"I've lost my file with the writing due to a computer break down or I lost the original manuscript"

This rule is a kind of merge between the safety tips and the rule about stating intentions I wrote about in the last issues. If you ever lost a writing this way, I can understand how you feel. I lost two precious works this way, but it has also taught me something really important. Even if you manage to recover the ideas used in a manuscript and put it together, it is not the same. I wrote once a funny short story. I had really a lot of fun when writing every sentence, but then my computer crashed and I had to either get over it, or try to write it from scratch. My intention changed from "make the funniest short story ever" into "do everything possible to write a story like before". I had much less fun whne writing it down, but it was "for a good cause". When I saw the result, UI wasn't satisfied. It came out pretty "stiff". That was a great proof to the theory that readers feel mostly the way you felt when you created your work. If you were bored, readers will most likely be bored with it and when you write with passion, it can also be noticed.

The other work was a novel. The second attempt on writing "Dis-ciple is gone". I was precognitive enough to save a part of the novel on a floppy disc, but due to my "ah, I'll save it tomorrow, nothing bad chould happen during one day" I delayed the saving of the writing for at least two weeks. When my computer crashed, I lost quite a lot of data. I started to work on the saved version, but the writing was much less detailed: I just wrote mechanically to catch up the losses. From that day on I lowered the time needed to autosave in MS Word from 10 down to 2 minutes. The result? Well, I still have it on my hard-drive, but I decided to try to write this novel over. This time, it's going to be good. I know it.

Rule no.23:"Careful what you think about when writing on the computer"

Ok, this may seem to apply only to me, but I am not sure if there aren't any people around who have or had the same problem. It happens to me a lot of times that if I have a bad thought that clashes with my beliefs (but I am not aware yet that I'm thinking about it), something bad happens to me: my sandwich falls on the ground, I hit with my foot against a chair or sofa, I bite my tongue and mostly: I hit with my head against something. Just as if a guardian angel would stand behind me and poked me (bad boy! You should be ashamed of yourself!). This happened at least twice when I was writing on the computer. I wrote a walkthrough for the game called "Fallout 2" and made fun about stealing plants from the blind shamans garden... the light went immidiately out when I finished the sentence. The second time I was about to finish the middle chapter. The hero thought about flaws of the goddesses he met a while ago. Everything was fine until the moment I wrote something about the possibility that even gods aren't perfect and make mistakes. As usual - the power went out and you can imagine how mad I was... autosave saved the progress every 10 minutes. I think that the "recover" file option hasn't been used yet (I used Word 97 I think). Superstion or not, God or my Muse. It doesn't matter, I just want to stay away from unwanted thoughts during the writing process.

Rule no.24:"How many projects to work on at the same time"

I would advise you to try to work on multiple projects at once. It often happens that you want to write your novel but can't find a way to move on, you lack ideas. You can sit around and waste your time on staring at the text, but you can also switch between files and write your writing tutorial, a writer's diary, work on your character sheet, work on your other novel, write an aricle, an educational book on something you know well (f.e. programming). Work on something that brings results and let your subconciousness work on further concepts for your main project - your novel. It's just the way it is, sometimes we don't feel like palying football, but we want to play Counter-Strike and on the other we can't even look at the computer. The work on multiple projects at the same time will ensure that you get SOMETHING done and won't waste time on waiting for something what is most likely not going to happen. It's not about the amount of projects, but about the length. It's much easier to find motivation to finish short books rather than books that take years to write.

Rule no.25:"When to use the ";" interpunction sign"

I took me a lot of time to figure out what this sign was used for. When I undertsood its purpose I started to love it, bacause it solved some of my greatest problems in writing. When you count things or name one after another, you use a comma: "Sheeps, dogs, wolfs, elephants..." but if you want to make such a list, but are afraid that the countdown becomes hard to understand due to the overflow of information, you use a semicolon:"The sheeps that Gorm got from his father, that isn't among the living anymore; dogs that multiplied like rabbits and that Gorm had no heart to kill or abandon; wolfs, that raided the local meadows for centuries and that should have been killed by the king's mena long time ago; etc." If you would use a comma, the "flow of the thought" could be interrupted.

The other situation when you use a semicolon is when it's hard to understand the sentence because of lots of additional information.
"He dragged the corpse of his father, whom he never loved, not even liked, who could never accept him because of his dark past, that he considered as humiliating for the whole family and whom he killed in a moment of rage, down the stairs"
Of course, it's hard to invent a good sentence ad hoc, without further preparations, but I guess you unetrstand what I mean. The words "down the stairs" could get lost in the text especially because the proper parts aren't bold in a book. How this should llok like:
"He dragged the corpse of his father, whom he never loved, not even liked, who could never accept him because of his dark past, that he considered as humiliating for the whole family and whom he killed in a moment of rage;he dragged his corpse down the stairs.

Some define the semicolon as a transfer between the comma and the dot/point. They say that the semicolon is used when the comma is too 'weak' to part a word or experssion that doesn't fit into the context much and when the point is to 'strong' to part this word or experssion from the previous sentence.
"His skin was covered in sweat, the flies bit him time after time, the nurse laid compresses on his head;too late - he was about to die.

If you would use a comma here, it would look like that the fact he is dying or the expression "too late" is in fact an activity like laying compresses on someones head. If you would end the sentence with a point, the reader would ask himself: "ok, his skin is hot, he sweats, the flies bite, the nurse laid compresses, so what?" The part with the dying belongs to this sentence, but at the same time it doesn't fit into the sentence because of the way it was written. You could write this sentence like "...but it was too late - he was dying" but as you know, not every sentence sounds good. The sentence in the first example contains a dose of dramatism, suspense.

See You in the next issues of the article series!

I hope this will help you to improve your writing. Watch out for my biggest projects: I want to show you step by step how to correct and edit your summary and then show you phases which a writing can go through before it's finished.

Here are the links to my previous guides, articles, tutorials. Please, have a look. These articles are written intentionally so that they can be valid and useful even after years. They don't get outdated.

Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #4(4 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #3(5 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #2(6 favs)
How to: a good summary to present your novel(5 favs)
You inside of Tetris:how to avoid artist's blocks(6 favs)
When DA is down: Interesting websites #1(4 favs)
Tutorial:ABC of style. Writing for everyone #1(6 favs)
What medias do you use? Music!(3 favs)
When DA is down: Interesting websites #2(1 fav)

total: 41 favs-10 articles so far