On Monday we went to Half Priced books. I wanted to look for the recommended book Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain. I combed the writing section without finding it. The only book I did pick up and flip through was 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes: (And How to Avoid Them) by Jack M. Bickham. I didn't buy it, but it looked like it had useful information in it. I'm reading old posts from Eric Nylund's blog today and low and behold he had picked up and read that very book toward the beginning of his writing days. Maybe I should've bought the book.

Things I learned from Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass

The lesson is there, but the application will take more time. Tad Williams infuses description into narrative. Virtually every action is paired with a description or an analogy. A couple excerpts spoiler warnings placed here:

Fredericks was walking close beside them, anxious to hear whatever was said. The monkeys had lost interest, and were following Bes like a fluttering yellow cape as the little god capered for the children trotting out of the houses to line the impromptu parade route.

and

They trudged on. Orlando could no longer remember what he had felt like earlier in the morning-that wonderful, if illusory, sensation of health that had seemed to run through him instead of blood. No one else appeared to be having a good time in these hot corridors either. Even the monkeys were drooping a bit, following a more or less straight course, fanned out in a tiny "v" behind Bes like geese flying south for the winter.

Where do I start?

You start by writing something. The first stories I really came up with were more like two or three minute scenes in a movie (two people fight with monsters in a forest clearing, a boy falls in love with a girl, something cool explodes). The idea is what brings you to the blank page. Every story starts as an idea. So the first step is to write as much about that idea as possible. What is the idea? Okay, what happened before the idea? What happened after the idea? How much detail can you write out about your idea? Once you've written all you can lean back in your chair and say these exact words, "This is total crap." No one else is going to say it to you in the beginning. They might say things like, "It's cool, but it's too much you," or, "So that's it? What happened before the story?"
Once you've admitted to yourself that what a pile of poo sits in front of you on a piece of paper, you've got some options. You end goal is to publish, right. So you can give it to someone to critique. Second, you can rewrite it. Third you can say screw it and send it to some kind of publishing entity. You can choose to do all three, and you can do them in whatever order you like. Mix it up. Get crazy. Whatever you choose, remember that in the end you want to send it somewhere. There's http://duotrope.com/. Search for a while, or pick a place to send something to and write for that particular publication.
"But my idea is for a novel," you say. Well, okay, you're novel will have chapters in it, right? So let's start with a chapter and move from there. Frank Herbert's Dune series started with a short story. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series started with a short story called The Sentinal.

Rewriting. It sucks. It's hard to do because you really want your story to be right the first time. Rewriting sucks because you've gone from creating something to fixing something and you don't even know what's broken.

At this moment I'm listening to Brother Odd by Dean Koontz. I think I can say that I started the year with Playing for Pizza, John Grisham. So that begins the official book count of the year.

Methods

My first method of writing was the Idea. A scene would pop into my brain, and I would write that out. The problem is that one scene does not make a story, and you can write a thousand words for one scene. The two or three short stories I've written have really been simple scenes or a few scenes strung together, but there's no progression. Things happen, but nothing changes.
The scene merges with the method of streaming conscience. You sit down, you type, and then when you're done typing you have a story. When I read On Writing by Stephen King I got that idea. Just sit down kid, type until your fingers go numb, and you've got a story.
I listened to Robert McKee's book, Story. He makes the case for outlining, and Eric Nylund uses this method too. For now I'm going to dabble in some of both stream of conscience and outlining. I've got too many stories that aren't complete and will require major revisions for subsequent drafts.

Hierarchy

I'm listening to Robert McKee's book Story on cd. He puts together the hierarchy of a screenplay: beats > scene > sequence > act > story.