The Wasted Poet

This is the website of an aspiring author, Wayne Peterson. The name of the website, Wasted Poet, refers not to an alchohol induced state of mind but rather to the sad fact that I wasted much of my life not following my dream of writing. I have decided late in life to go for it and try to write a novel. I am under no illusions as to the difficulty of the task or the low probability of success. Fortunately, we live in times when self-publishing has become common and relatively easy to do.

As it turns out, the process of studying storytelling has been immensely rewarding in and of itself. I can no longer read a book or watch a movie without noticing and marveling at the storyteller’s techniques. Now that I know what a “pinch point” is I find myself looking for it, LOL. I am so glad I began this journey.

I am a programmer in my day job and am very left-brained so naturally I will approach writing a novel in a very structured manner. This might not work well for many artitsts but I think it will work well for me. The topics (shown in the horizontal menu under the header) I am going to include on this site will detail my research and learning process as I teach myself how to write a good novel. I will reference all sources of my research as I summarize my understanding of it, so that you can go and consult the source if you find something either confusing or inspiring. I will have some examples of my practice work for others to evaluate and criticize. My pace will be slow as I still have a day job and, honestly, am in no hurry.

I decided to keep this site simple – about content rather than pretty web tricks. I am using a very simple WordPress theme with a plugin to handle stories samples I write. Blogging will be a new and exciting experience for me so bear with me as I get the hang of it.

Wish me luck . . .