What's all this then?
Once upon a time, I moped about mopishly and lamented that I could never write anything. I had all these stories in my head, but I just knew that I could never do them justice. It was really very sad.
Then I signed up for an internet writing contest where the only prize was fame and an an icon, and I wrote some stories. And then I wrote some more stories. And I kept writing stories. And I made it pretty darn far.
It was neat.
I have a system for writing stories now. I'm not going to say I've figured it out, but fiction is comfortable for me. It's cozy. I can wiggle my toes and relax a little with it, because I feel like I know what I'm doing.
Which is why I made this journal.
I intend to do the things here which make me uncomfortable. I noticed recently that I was spouting off to myself things like "I can't write essays worth a damn" and "humor is amazing, but way too hard for me" and "writing personal stuff is never going to be something I'm good at".
En garde, negative beliefs. Have at you!
It might, in the end, turn out that I'm right about those things. I might suck at them. And you know what? I'm ok with that. But I can't let myself get comfortable. I can't just sit back and enjoy the thing that I know I do pretty well without testing the waters and seeing if I can do some other things, too. I might surprise myself!
The only rule I'm going to impose on myself is this: no fiction. And rules are made to be broken anyway, so I might throw caution to the wind on that one too, but I think I won't. I can be kind of stubborn at times.
Of course, I'm going to be writing whatever the hell it is I'll be writing here while writing fiction like crazy (and crazy fiction, I might add) elsewhere. So this might turn out to be a laughable exercise all around. We'll see.
Once upon a time I learned how to write some stories, and I learned how to write them pretty well. Let's see what I learn to write this time around.
Then I signed up for an internet writing contest where the only prize was fame and an an icon, and I wrote some stories. And then I wrote some more stories. And I kept writing stories. And I made it pretty darn far.
It was neat.
I have a system for writing stories now. I'm not going to say I've figured it out, but fiction is comfortable for me. It's cozy. I can wiggle my toes and relax a little with it, because I feel like I know what I'm doing.
Which is why I made this journal.
I intend to do the things here which make me uncomfortable. I noticed recently that I was spouting off to myself things like "I can't write essays worth a damn" and "humor is amazing, but way too hard for me" and "writing personal stuff is never going to be something I'm good at".
En garde, negative beliefs. Have at you!
It might, in the end, turn out that I'm right about those things. I might suck at them. And you know what? I'm ok with that. But I can't let myself get comfortable. I can't just sit back and enjoy the thing that I know I do pretty well without testing the waters and seeing if I can do some other things, too. I might surprise myself!
The only rule I'm going to impose on myself is this: no fiction. And rules are made to be broken anyway, so I might throw caution to the wind on that one too, but I think I won't. I can be kind of stubborn at times.
Of course, I'm going to be writing whatever the hell it is I'll be writing here while writing fiction like crazy (and crazy fiction, I might add) elsewhere. So this might turn out to be a laughable exercise all around. We'll see.
Once upon a time I learned how to write some stories, and I learned how to write them pretty well. Let's see what I learn to write this time around.