I’m finally starting to write stuff again, and it feels awesome being able to do so! I think my main problem was that I felt that whatever I wrote had to be perfect in every way and at least ten times better than the piece I had written previously. In my mind, if something wasn’t going to be amazing, properly thought out and worked on for years until it was just right, it wasn’t worth writing.
I’ve decided to fix this by starting to write a novel-length story. The reason I’m hesitant to call it a novel as of yet is because when you specifically state you’re writing a novel, the automatic assumption is that you’re seriously writing a book which is planned to be published. Well, what I’m writing is probably never going to be published, not as a book, or an eBook, or even for free somewhere on the internet. I usually put everything I write on the internet for feedback, because I used to think that there was no point in writing something that nobody is going to read. But now I know better; on the contrary, it’s necessary to do so. Allow yourself to be bad, so that you have the growing room to improve.
The story I’m currently writing really shouldn’t be written in novel-form at all. The story suits an anime or a manga far better than any novel or short story. The problem there is that I have all the artistic ability of a duck in a desert without paper or eyes, so I’m having to stick with the format of a novel. Furthermore, as I won’t be showing it to anybody, I don’t have the barrier of having to filter out subjects which people may associate with my own personal opinions. I’ve never been a fan of people being able to psychologically analyse me through fictive works, mainly because most of them are actually fictional and have nothing to do with me. I get very paranoid that people will read third-person free-indirect-speech as the author’s own opinion on the story’s subject matter, which could prove very unfortunate if I was writing through the perspective of a highly flawed character such as a racist or a sexist. Whilst this paranoia is probably highly illogical, I can rest easy knowing that my own private story, unread by anyone other than those I select to show passages to, is safe in my own hands.
It feels damn good to write again.
Perpetually Perturbed 