Thoughts on Writing
I enjoy writing; it's something that helps me work through problems when I write in my journal, and it's how I feel I communicate the best. Even when I'm dashing off a quick note to somebody it's easier for me to "talk" with written/typed words than trying to get it out of my mouth.
When I was a teenager, I loved to write fiction. Most of the time I wrote fan fiction - Star Wars was my general go-to - but I had some original ideas as well. For the most part they were short stories; I wasn't really into the idea of writing a novel. (Although I tried this a few times with NaNoWriMo.) My dream at the time was getting something published. In my last year in high school I even participated in a writing workshop event at a local university that culminated in being able to submit a story or poem into an anthology to be published. I'd love to link to the publication but I can't find any trace of it online at the moment (I have it on my bookshelf at home - maybe I'll try again later).
I continued to write in various capacities in my twenties, mostly enjoying the flash fiction format. I also enjoyed a smaller version of that, on a site called "Ficly":
I published those stories in 2010 and 2011, when I was in my mid-20's. I just re-read some of them and they're better than I remember. In my mind, they are clumsily-written stories and not very good. Looking at them separated by 12+ years, viewing them as if they were written by someone else, I think they're not bad! There is some fun imagery going on in a few of those stories and a couple of people seemed to like them. The last story in the bunch has the most comments, and they are quite constructive. Almost makes me want to revisit it using some of the recommendations.
In the years since, I've gone away completely from fiction writing. Everything I've done is in the form of blog entries, personal essays, that kind of thing. I made the decision a long time ago that I didn't want to work on fiction. I'm happy to consume everyone else's stories, but I don't feel like I'm capable of creating interesting characters and stories. Actually, it's mostly the character side of things that has never been my strength (perhaps why I wrote a lot of fan fiction back in the day; even with original characters it's easier to create them when your world is already built).
I still feel that way; becoming a published fiction author isn't a goal of mine. However I wouldn't mind dabbling around with flash fiction again. The only thing is...what is my goal? Would I like to get published, or do I just want people to read what I write and talk to me about it?
Probably the latter. While it would be nice to be published, it's not super important to me - especially since being published these days usually means in a digital format anyway, and I can do that myself. So for me it's probably enough to know that people are reading what I write, and have the occasional conversation with somebody.
The kind of thing I want to write is article-style stuff. This - gestures around - this is a blog post. There's nothing wrong with blog posts and I enjoy writing them. But sometimes I have the itch to write something a little more formal. I don't do it as often as I would like, which I suppose is another goal: to write that type of piece more often.
I was inspired to write this after reading this post by Akshata; it has nothing to do with writing, at least not directly, but my brain linked things together to create this meandering post.
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