The joy of writing
I don't know why I decided to go back to writing. It might have been the fact that I had a fountain pen that I got from one of my uncles and I felt like using it rather than just leaving it rusting... or it might be the fact that I effectively enjoyed doing so when I was a teenager. In fact, writing and drawing were a big part of my youth. It's a weird thing I had forgotten all about it.
Back when I was a teenager, I remember really enjoying writing. When the classes were too boring, I would keep an extra sheet of blank paper under my books and do some writing during the classes. Of course, that implies that I did not pay attention to important classes, but nowadays I see the whole situation with the following perspective: I wouldn't pay attention anyway if I weren't doing anything else, so at least if I wrote something I would still be producing some content, right?
I also remember letting my friends read the raw first draft. Back then they seemed to enjoy my stories. Now that I'm slightly more mature (at least I hope I am), I know that the stories weren't a really big deal, but in those years school made us read such boring books that anything that wasn't within their requirements list was a good read. I didn't write anything worthy of intelligent discussions, but my friends usually asked whether I wrote a couple more pages or if I had finished the story.
When I got in college, there just wasn't enough time for me to write anything... or do much related to my leisure activities, be it writing, drawing or playing videogames. Not only I had classes at the morning, had to work during the afternoon and study at night, I was also going through a tough time of my life in which I was feeling miserable and useless. Then came the fandoms, which did make me happy for a long while and made me write a thing or two, but nothing really serious.
It was only several years after I graduated from college and started working and had more time for myself that I started to give writing a thought, but I think that what really made me take back the habit of writing was a comment my podcast partner made regarding this topic. I think I casually mentioned that I used to enjoy writing or anything like that, and he said something like "you are one of the few people who not only writes in a way that is fun to read, you can also write it that way in English! Food for thought!" (for those who might not know, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese).
I did take notes on what he said, but let it simmer for a while.
When I was listening to my first audiobooks (I believe it was specifically Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings), after a long day of work I decided that I was too tired to pay attention to the audiobook I was listening and decided to take a short one-day break from it to listen to some music. One particular song made me picture a really cool fighting scene in my head, and then I started to think of the fighter's background and all the "what ifs" of this character's life. After that, everything started to come together in my mind: the stories I wrote when I was younger were finished, but I felt like I still had a couple of stories to tell. Most of my stories sounded like fanfictions (some of them actually were), but then it occurred to me: can I create a whole new world instead of using one that already exists? Can I make some adaptations, make the story completely original? It was then that I realized that yes, my story was so distant from the original one in which I based it that it would actually make a pretty cool brand new story.
It took me several months and an old fountain pen to gather enough courage, a pile of blank paper and starting to write it. At first I wrote just one page and a half. I was fully aware it wasn't the best thing the world had ever seen, but hey, it felt good to turn the computer off for one night and put out some ideas into the paper. So I did it again the next night. And the next one. And the next.
Two months later, I had a 80 page story. It sucked, it had a lot of problems, but it was a full story.
I'm not going to say anything about the story itself (I'll leave it to a separate post), but one thing I have to admit: writing is one of the most relaxing activities I've ever done since a long, long time.
I'm still not sure whether I'll try to publish it or not. But one thing I know: I will definitely take a good care editing the text because I eventually do want to show the world what was going through my head in those silent, solitary moments when all that existed was me, my paper, and my cheap fountain pen.
Back when I was a teenager, I remember really enjoying writing. When the classes were too boring, I would keep an extra sheet of blank paper under my books and do some writing during the classes. Of course, that implies that I did not pay attention to important classes, but nowadays I see the whole situation with the following perspective: I wouldn't pay attention anyway if I weren't doing anything else, so at least if I wrote something I would still be producing some content, right?
I also remember letting my friends read the raw first draft. Back then they seemed to enjoy my stories. Now that I'm slightly more mature (at least I hope I am), I know that the stories weren't a really big deal, but in those years school made us read such boring books that anything that wasn't within their requirements list was a good read. I didn't write anything worthy of intelligent discussions, but my friends usually asked whether I wrote a couple more pages or if I had finished the story.
When I got in college, there just wasn't enough time for me to write anything... or do much related to my leisure activities, be it writing, drawing or playing videogames. Not only I had classes at the morning, had to work during the afternoon and study at night, I was also going through a tough time of my life in which I was feeling miserable and useless. Then came the fandoms, which did make me happy for a long while and made me write a thing or two, but nothing really serious.
It was only several years after I graduated from college and started working and had more time for myself that I started to give writing a thought, but I think that what really made me take back the habit of writing was a comment my podcast partner made regarding this topic. I think I casually mentioned that I used to enjoy writing or anything like that, and he said something like "you are one of the few people who not only writes in a way that is fun to read, you can also write it that way in English! Food for thought!" (for those who might not know, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese).
I did take notes on what he said, but let it simmer for a while.
When I was listening to my first audiobooks (I believe it was specifically Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings), after a long day of work I decided that I was too tired to pay attention to the audiobook I was listening and decided to take a short one-day break from it to listen to some music. One particular song made me picture a really cool fighting scene in my head, and then I started to think of the fighter's background and all the "what ifs" of this character's life. After that, everything started to come together in my mind: the stories I wrote when I was younger were finished, but I felt like I still had a couple of stories to tell. Most of my stories sounded like fanfictions (some of them actually were), but then it occurred to me: can I create a whole new world instead of using one that already exists? Can I make some adaptations, make the story completely original? It was then that I realized that yes, my story was so distant from the original one in which I based it that it would actually make a pretty cool brand new story.
It took me several months and an old fountain pen to gather enough courage, a pile of blank paper and starting to write it. At first I wrote just one page and a half. I was fully aware it wasn't the best thing the world had ever seen, but hey, it felt good to turn the computer off for one night and put out some ideas into the paper. So I did it again the next night. And the next one. And the next.
Two months later, I had a 80 page story. It sucked, it had a lot of problems, but it was a full story.
I'm not going to say anything about the story itself (I'll leave it to a separate post), but one thing I have to admit: writing is one of the most relaxing activities I've ever done since a long, long time.
I'm still not sure whether I'll try to publish it or not. But one thing I know: I will definitely take a good care editing the text because I eventually do want to show the world what was going through my head in those silent, solitary moments when all that existed was me, my paper, and my cheap fountain pen.