Good for you, I’d love to have the mental stamina to write a book. Good luck!

The best advice I ever heard was (pardon the profanity, it’s a quote from Kevin Smith): “Finish your fucking manuscript! If you haven’t finished, what are you going to do with it? It’s useless as a manuscript.”

I always think back to kevin when I cant get in the writing mood. It’s probably a good idea to read The Whatever from John Scalzi, although doesn’t gurarantee anything meaningful in hid site. There’s also Charlie Stross, who publishes a weblog at http://www.antipope.org/:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html

i think william gibson and bruce sterling and neal stephensen all produce weblogs or columns, just google for them. also, since you’re writing fantasy, i should mention that al the above is actually science fiction.

I highly, highly, suggest you read Cyteen by CJ Cherryh, who publishes both SF and fantasy. Her weblog is here:

http://www.cherryh.com/www/progress.htm

It’s a very intimidating book with psychological drama that is very intense. I also suggest you read 40,000 in Gehenna, which is mostly fantasy, and there’s Hammerfall, which is.

You don’t find too many authors that can san genres and do the things she can do, but you get a very intimate picture of an author’s mind (reading cherryh’s blog, and i learned i wasn’t the only person whose characters talk to them. (the quote was “Justin is talking to me again so I can put some more work into Cyteen”)

Really, go read Cyteen. It is an in-fucking-credible book,

Lastly, I write about my writing as a sort of prearchaeology. I write the weblog so that I can look back on what was thinking when I was feeling or thinking when I’m re-reading or editing the part (or a galley editor has given me a red circle WTF?). Anyways, mine’s at http://innenin.blogspot.com/ If you’re looking for someone to read your book, let me quote Scalzi on this one:

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/2007/07/01/why_i_wont_read_your_unpublish.html

I’m in a good enough mood that I’d consider reading the four chapters, but I can’t for the reasons Scalzi lists. There’s a progress for publishing, and it tends to be very stodgy, stubborn, and immutable. You write your book. You edit your book. You give it to your agent, who then tells you what’s wrong with it and you go make those changes EVEN IF YOU REALLY LIIKED THAT SCENE because they publish the book, you don’t. after everything is done, and goes to galleys, which look for MORE errors you have to fix. when that comes back, it goes to an editor which is the last gate before paper. The editor may eviscerate your work; that’s her job. So,yep, again, another scene gets clobbered, or whatever.

But, we’re nowhere near that at four paragraphs.

Sorry for this huge, huge post, but I had to learn all of this on my own, mostly.