Snowflake Challenge: Day 8
In your own space, talk about a talent (or talents) you have. Everyone's got something they're good at.
I already talked about cooking, so I'm not going to ramble on about that again. I suppose I have a lot of talents, but none of them are what I consider particularly "developed". I can sort of draw, but it's a painful struggle getting what's in my head down on paper, so I don't do it very often and haven't really refined that beyond whatever skill level I had when I was taking three art classes a year in High School. I'm relatively decent with photoshop, but that's mostly me fucking around until things look good, I'm sure I'm not using half the tools I do like they're supposed to be. I've been told I have a great singing voice that's only gotten better since starting T (my range has certainly shifted and increased), but again, that's untrained, and it's mostly just me singing along to stuff at my computer or getting really high scores on Rock Band (I'm especially good at Green Day Rock Band since my voice has settled into a nice Billie Joe range XD). I can sew and do crafts, but that's an occasional hobby, not something I actively work on improving.
So I guess I'll talk about writing.
Day Eight
I've always been a storyteller. When I was little I hardly ever played with toys. I had toys. I had dolls that I was disinterested in, two American Girl dolls that I enjoyed setting up in elaborate displays more than actually playing with; I was far more interested in their tiny props than the dolls themselves. I had Barbies I mutilated (there's probably some psychological connotations there that I don't really want to reflect on for too long XD;). Stuffed animals aplenty, Ninja Turtle action figures, all the usual suspects for someone raised by a mother that really wanted a girly girl daughter but also respected what sort of toys I actually wanted.
Still I hardly played with them, and if I did it was just as props. I had just as much fun with long sturdy sticks, mud, rocks, snow, the woods behind our house, my mom's gardens, and other natural things. When I played it wasn't making toys do things, it wasn't even just me doing things. I would hold court inside my head to entire countries worth of characters. I would be a rebel knight, a caveman, a sorcerer, the faerie king (yes, I was always a boy, funny that), and more animals and mythical creatures than are able to be listed here. I would wander around our wide yard (grew up on my mom and dad's herb farm, we had a lot of land, and that's not even counting the National Forest surrounding us), or the more remote areas of my elementary school's playground, talking out elaborate scenarios, voicing all the characters, not just the one I was supposed to be. I rarely included other kids in my playtime. Other kids didn't know how to play correctly. Even in class, my mind would never be on the lesson at hand (part of that was ADHD, but that's another topic entirely), I would always be staring out the window, continuing my playtime silently in my mind.
I couldn't properly read until the fourth grade (again, that's another topic), and yet somehow that was the year my teacher wrote in the comments section of my report card, "I can't wait to read [birthname]'s first novel." And that one comment has stuck with me my whole life.
In middle school I started writing Animorphs fanfiction and round robins with the small group of friends I miraculously managed to make. (well, okay, I was writing Star Wars fanfiction by myself as early as the fifth grade, but that was self insert nonsense and just for myself). I filled an entire notebook, front and back of pages, with one lengthy epic that I still have kicking around somewhere. We also passed a notebook around in which we each wrote a chapter before passing it on to the next person in line. This continued into my freshman year (Funny side note: my friends would always focus on romantic, soap opera-y plots, while I would INJECT ALL THE ACTION ADVENTURE into my chapters, I'm sure I was quite annoying to whomever followed me in line XD;).
In my sophomore year my bffl Kyr and I discovered Digimon Adventure, and, gasp, internet fandom! (Other people write fan stories??) and it was pretty much a downward spiral from there, especially once I got into slash and dragged her along kicking and screaming. I had been text based role playing since the year before, but that was unrelated. This was full stories that I could share with a community. And people actually wanted to read my stuff! (I don't know why, my writing was such shit back then). I spent most of class time in High School sitting the back of class (not always by choice. Having a last name that starts with Y is fun~), usually by a window. If I wasn't reading, say if the teacher demanded attention, I was scribbling in a notebook. Not taking notes on class, mind, but writing either fanfic, or bad!poetry, or half formed original creations. Honestly, how I managed to never fail a single class is still a mystery to me.
Then came college time, and I hadn't a fucking clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I ended up getting accepted to this tiny art school downstate, on the merits of a portfolio that included both artwork and stories. I was undeclared my first semester, still having no idea what I wanted to major in, I was pretty much interested in all the art majors offered, even photography. It was my Intro to Fiction class that really made me realize just how much a part of my life writing was. I had an amazing professor, and he was also the advisor for the Creative Writing program, so I declared that as my major for mt second semester. Then of course I a mental break that involved my sexuality, gender, emotionally abusive boyfriend, and a whole bunch of other crap, and entered an extreme period of writers block that lasted a solid year. I left that school (the CW advisor actually cried when I left), returned home, and continued to descend into a miserable, uncreative state.
Then Green Day found me. I gained the courage to break up with my boyfriend, I got into punk pretty hard, my family moved across town, and I ended up with four amazing "internet" friends that are still a part of my life to this day (aside: lol. I dated two of them and eventually married a third. XD;). I started drabbling. I didn't just start, I wrote a good two hundred drabbles (and a handful of long fics) during the year I spent in that fandom. I finally started to find my voice, something I'd struggled with in college. I began to learn the value in the brevity; when you only have 100 words to work with to tell an entire story, you really learn how to focus on word choice, on how to say a lot with a little. I began to come alive creatively again.
Then My Chem happened, right at a point where I was the most suicidal I'd ever been or have been since. As I began to spiral into alcoholism my writing took on a darker tone. I began injecting poetic metaphors into my words, until I'd developed a style that I tend to describe as "prose poetic". As several people have told me, I learned how to "paint" with words. I began pouring my soul into my work. It didn't matter that it was "just fanfiction", it was an outlet, and it, along with the music, helped keep my head above water until I could get my ass to therapy. I'm still infinitely proud of many of the stories I wrote for that fandom, because they were the stories that helped me fully define my "author voice". The voice I don't always use in my fanfiction, because it's not always appropriate to my current fandom(s), but certainly the voice I use whenever I strive to tackle something original.
I used to play the "I suck" card all the time with my writing. And for a long time, I did actually suck. I look back at my early fanfiction and cringe, because its just so bad, and I knew it wasn't amazing, but that didn't stop me from writing. It didn't stop me from telling stories. And I'm glad it didn't. Finally I'm comfortable with my writing. Finally I can look at my work and say "this is good". Sometimes I feel a little possessed when writing, sometimes I don't know where the shit comes from when I put it on the page. Sometimes I'll type out a description or a bit of dialogue and think "Fuck, that's good. Where did that come from?" I'm proud of my work, from the simplest drabble to the most elaborate epic. I'm not perfect. Not a single writer on this earth, even published, widely respected authors, are perfect. I'm constantly growing, constantly trying new things, learning new words, experimenting with different points of view or styles or settings.
Talent, especially artistic talent, is a process, it's a lifelong pursuit to be better than you were before. Writing for me is a compulsion. It's something I have to do, even if it's "just fanfiction". Feedback is good, praise is good, but it's the actual act of writing that I thrive on.
Wow. I did not mean to on that long or spew my whole life story. Bah. Sorry for the tl;dr. ^^;
crossposted from dreamwidth
I already talked about cooking, so I'm not going to ramble on about that again. I suppose I have a lot of talents, but none of them are what I consider particularly "developed". I can sort of draw, but it's a painful struggle getting what's in my head down on paper, so I don't do it very often and haven't really refined that beyond whatever skill level I had when I was taking three art classes a year in High School. I'm relatively decent with photoshop, but that's mostly me fucking around until things look good, I'm sure I'm not using half the tools I do like they're supposed to be. I've been told I have a great singing voice that's only gotten better since starting T (my range has certainly shifted and increased), but again, that's untrained, and it's mostly just me singing along to stuff at my computer or getting really high scores on Rock Band (I'm especially good at Green Day Rock Band since my voice has settled into a nice Billie Joe range XD). I can sew and do crafts, but that's an occasional hobby, not something I actively work on improving.
So I guess I'll talk about writing.
Day Eight
I've always been a storyteller. When I was little I hardly ever played with toys. I had toys. I had dolls that I was disinterested in, two American Girl dolls that I enjoyed setting up in elaborate displays more than actually playing with; I was far more interested in their tiny props than the dolls themselves. I had Barbies I mutilated (there's probably some psychological connotations there that I don't really want to reflect on for too long XD;). Stuffed animals aplenty, Ninja Turtle action figures, all the usual suspects for someone raised by a mother that really wanted a girly girl daughter but also respected what sort of toys I actually wanted.
Still I hardly played with them, and if I did it was just as props. I had just as much fun with long sturdy sticks, mud, rocks, snow, the woods behind our house, my mom's gardens, and other natural things. When I played it wasn't making toys do things, it wasn't even just me doing things. I would hold court inside my head to entire countries worth of characters. I would be a rebel knight, a caveman, a sorcerer, the faerie king (yes, I was always a boy, funny that), and more animals and mythical creatures than are able to be listed here. I would wander around our wide yard (grew up on my mom and dad's herb farm, we had a lot of land, and that's not even counting the National Forest surrounding us), or the more remote areas of my elementary school's playground, talking out elaborate scenarios, voicing all the characters, not just the one I was supposed to be. I rarely included other kids in my playtime. Other kids didn't know how to play correctly. Even in class, my mind would never be on the lesson at hand (part of that was ADHD, but that's another topic entirely), I would always be staring out the window, continuing my playtime silently in my mind.
I couldn't properly read until the fourth grade (again, that's another topic), and yet somehow that was the year my teacher wrote in the comments section of my report card, "I can't wait to read [birthname]'s first novel." And that one comment has stuck with me my whole life.
In middle school I started writing Animorphs fanfiction and round robins with the small group of friends I miraculously managed to make. (well, okay, I was writing Star Wars fanfiction by myself as early as the fifth grade, but that was self insert nonsense and just for myself). I filled an entire notebook, front and back of pages, with one lengthy epic that I still have kicking around somewhere. We also passed a notebook around in which we each wrote a chapter before passing it on to the next person in line. This continued into my freshman year (Funny side note: my friends would always focus on romantic, soap opera-y plots, while I would INJECT ALL THE ACTION ADVENTURE into my chapters, I'm sure I was quite annoying to whomever followed me in line XD;).
In my sophomore year my bffl Kyr and I discovered Digimon Adventure, and, gasp, internet fandom! (Other people write fan stories??) and it was pretty much a downward spiral from there, especially once I got into slash and dragged her along kicking and screaming. I had been text based role playing since the year before, but that was unrelated. This was full stories that I could share with a community. And people actually wanted to read my stuff! (I don't know why, my writing was such shit back then). I spent most of class time in High School sitting the back of class (not always by choice. Having a last name that starts with Y is fun~), usually by a window. If I wasn't reading, say if the teacher demanded attention, I was scribbling in a notebook. Not taking notes on class, mind, but writing either fanfic, or bad!poetry, or half formed original creations. Honestly, how I managed to never fail a single class is still a mystery to me.
Then came college time, and I hadn't a fucking clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I ended up getting accepted to this tiny art school downstate, on the merits of a portfolio that included both artwork and stories. I was undeclared my first semester, still having no idea what I wanted to major in, I was pretty much interested in all the art majors offered, even photography. It was my Intro to Fiction class that really made me realize just how much a part of my life writing was. I had an amazing professor, and he was also the advisor for the Creative Writing program, so I declared that as my major for mt second semester. Then of course I a mental break that involved my sexuality, gender, emotionally abusive boyfriend, and a whole bunch of other crap, and entered an extreme period of writers block that lasted a solid year. I left that school (the CW advisor actually cried when I left), returned home, and continued to descend into a miserable, uncreative state.
Then Green Day found me. I gained the courage to break up with my boyfriend, I got into punk pretty hard, my family moved across town, and I ended up with four amazing "internet" friends that are still a part of my life to this day (aside: lol. I dated two of them and eventually married a third. XD;). I started drabbling. I didn't just start, I wrote a good two hundred drabbles (and a handful of long fics) during the year I spent in that fandom. I finally started to find my voice, something I'd struggled with in college. I began to learn the value in the brevity; when you only have 100 words to work with to tell an entire story, you really learn how to focus on word choice, on how to say a lot with a little. I began to come alive creatively again.
Then My Chem happened, right at a point where I was the most suicidal I'd ever been or have been since. As I began to spiral into alcoholism my writing took on a darker tone. I began injecting poetic metaphors into my words, until I'd developed a style that I tend to describe as "prose poetic". As several people have told me, I learned how to "paint" with words. I began pouring my soul into my work. It didn't matter that it was "just fanfiction", it was an outlet, and it, along with the music, helped keep my head above water until I could get my ass to therapy. I'm still infinitely proud of many of the stories I wrote for that fandom, because they were the stories that helped me fully define my "author voice". The voice I don't always use in my fanfiction, because it's not always appropriate to my current fandom(s), but certainly the voice I use whenever I strive to tackle something original.
I used to play the "I suck" card all the time with my writing. And for a long time, I did actually suck. I look back at my early fanfiction and cringe, because its just so bad, and I knew it wasn't amazing, but that didn't stop me from writing. It didn't stop me from telling stories. And I'm glad it didn't. Finally I'm comfortable with my writing. Finally I can look at my work and say "this is good". Sometimes I feel a little possessed when writing, sometimes I don't know where the shit comes from when I put it on the page. Sometimes I'll type out a description or a bit of dialogue and think "Fuck, that's good. Where did that come from?" I'm proud of my work, from the simplest drabble to the most elaborate epic. I'm not perfect. Not a single writer on this earth, even published, widely respected authors, are perfect. I'm constantly growing, constantly trying new things, learning new words, experimenting with different points of view or styles or settings.
Talent, especially artistic talent, is a process, it's a lifelong pursuit to be better than you were before. Writing for me is a compulsion. It's something I have to do, even if it's "just fanfiction". Feedback is good, praise is good, but it's the actual act of writing that I thrive on.
Wow. I did not mean to on that long or spew my whole life story. Bah. Sorry for the tl;dr. ^^;
crossposted from dreamwidth