5 Best Things That Ever Happened To My Writing

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EDIT: If you like this journal entry, check out The Sarcastic Guide to Writing ebook www.amazon.com/The-Sarcastic-G… for exclusive content on world-building, character, and dialogue!

1. No one cared that I wrote. I say this in kind of the sin of omission sort of way. Looking back on growing up, no one in my family paid attention to the hours I spent in front of a keyboard. My mom never picked my brain about plots, my siblings were more likely to mock my prose than be curious about it. My pursuit was ignored, treated with apathy, as opposed to being actively cast down as "stupid" or "a waste of time". While I'm sure I used this "meh" reaction to self-flagellate and feel bad about myself, especially as a teen, in hindsight it provided a remarkable amount of focus. Not only that, if my murder-mystery mother and historical nonfiction father had read my wild tales of fantasy and provided feedback, it would have been either the empty encouragement of a parent or off-target, crushing criticism that (for the most part) wouldn't have been valid because they're neither writers nor Ideal Readers. Silence was my encouragement. It was a place where I could listen to what I was trying to say and do without distraction, said distraction including the "You're so wonderful because you put words on a page, you smarty you!"  That's not to say that receiving encouragement as a child to write is a bad thing; I had to have received a certain amount of it or I never would have pursued it. But let's face facts: I was a terrible writer for most of my existence (I'm slightly less so now), and if the terrible flaws within had been encouraged, I might have been taught something wrong for writing was right to do. By well-meaning folks who loved me. I never wrote to satisfy anyone but myself and my sense of what makes good story. If I'd grown up in a different environment, I might have ended up writing for someone else's validation. Learning how to work alone taught me self-sufficiency and, eventually, confidence.

2. I lived in the middle of nowhere before the Internet. We got dial-up in my house right around the time I was 11 or 12 years old. I was immediately distracted by the fact that The Lion King had gobs of fanart and roleplay forums, and by the grace of God missed the fanfiction bus. Nonetheless, rural Texas doesn't offer a lot in the way of writing groups or even writing enthusiasts. When I say my parents ignored my writing, that includes not reading what I begged them to. My friends also liked me, but not to the extent that they were willing to slog through 100,000 words of awful writing. And as well neither of them should have. I didn't learn to start rewriting until around 18 or 19. With no rewrites as recourse, I just wrote new stuff. Loads of it. My first real grasp of rewriting came in revamping worlds and plots, as opposed to line edits or reworked scenes. I started big at first; it wasn't until later I learned that the real miracles occur at a sentence level. But because I was in a vacuum, I had to learn to teach myself. And really, time at the keyboard is the most valuable time you will ever spend as a writer. Hearing what others have to say can be valuable, but never as valuable as the act of writing. Even now, I definitely understand that critique is a double-edged sword, and if you're not discerning enough, it can wreck the heart of your truth. A young, callow youth with no point of reference may well be streamrolled by a friend or a writing group telling them "you can't write about dragons; dragons are boring" or "this is cheap knockoff crap". I was at my most vulnerable as a teen; a bad experience could have shifted a tectonic plate in my skill. Instead, I was isolated and cocooned, left alone until I grew wings. After writing 500,000 some-odd words, there was no way I couldn't, and my experience gave me armor for inevitable criticism.

3. I roleplayed in Real Life. I started real-life roleplaying when I was probably 9 or so. I remember suffering the slings and arrows of my older bother's GURPS group (a bunch of teenage boys who were, I'm sure, just thrilled to have a bratty girl-child in their midst). I played just about everything, Dungeons and Dragons, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade, Mage: The Ascension, and so on.  Roleplay taught me the value of story elements like characterization, pacing, tension, and plot, without any of the recourse that would have been tied to my soul on the page. It was, in short, a place of total safety that never got above itself. You were not a badass when you steamrolled everyone else in the scene. Instead, if scenes were memorable, or worth reviewing, it was usually with mutual enthusiasm akin to fangirling from everyone who was involved in the story. While there was the typical one-upsmanship and anti-social, angsty Mary Sues, eventually (around 19 or so) I learned that the best scenes occurred when everyone was in sync. When everyone wanted the story to happen, and it stopped being about individual forces. It taught me my most valuable lesson: the relationship between reader and writer. And that a writer owes, above all else, story. When I wanted my characters to do this or do that and look awesome and cool, the session got boring, often tedious and always frustrating. I learned that there wasn't any such thing as "winning", there was just character and story. Once I let go of that, things opened up for me. Roleplay certainly offers some negative problems, usually within the realm of power-playing and one-upsmanship, but finding someone or someones that don't pull that crap can be the best thing ever. Especially when you find yourself willing to humiliate and degrade and set back your most beloved character. That's great training for plot and empathy, as well as character arcs.

4. I roleplayed on forums. Hands down, roleplay was the best thing that ever happened to me. And despite the incredibly inherent stupidity of it, I look back very fondly on my Lion King roleplay. Forum roleplay is unique in that it has all the perks of regular roleplay with the added ability to mess with prose. It's up to you to paint the scene or reaction for other people. If you do it wrong, the poor communication fails the situation. Again, it doesn't become about one's crappy writing; it becomes a rebuke in how to effectively communicate. (Having said that, I cannot read the word "oculars" without pissing my pants laughing, because no one who uses that word ever uses it correctly, and it always means someone's trying too hard.) Another thing I often noticed was that way, way too many roleplay scenes started on forums involved a character aimlessly wandering around, not doing anything, and definitely offering anything but conflict.(I called this the "Wanna chase butterflies?" setup.) I was incredibly bored by this, and created villains and tricksters who wanted to cause trouble. Who liked seeing a rise out of other characters, were willing to be mean, or at the very least, willing to yell at aimless character that they were getting in the way of their super-important task. It taught me the value of characters needing to be proactive, to have goals, and the value of a catalyst. A catalyst is what drives characters to go beyond their means. And I was surprised to find that a lot of people were delighted when their resident badass got put down and had to deal with being helpless for the first time, or when the world's friendliest leopard (I feel the need to reiterate this was Lion King roleplay) was driven to fury and outrage when faced with terrible cruelty. That's not to say some people weren't outraged that their Best Character Evar was being humiliated or forced to, gasp, compromise, but those people didn't last long. They were ousted by more cooperative people or straight up black-balled when it became clear they weren't worth the trouble. I think a lot of people were looking for a way for their character to face the best and worst of themselves, but they didn't know how because of societal pressures (no one wants to be That Guy). Cooperation is a necessary part of roleplay, and it translates to how the elements of plot and character cooperate to tell story. And just like a story where the characters refuse to do anything and the plot goes nowhere as a result, dealing with belligerent players who are only interested in showing you how totally awesome and badass they are, you learn real quick why Mary Sues are annoying and loathsome no matter where they show up.

5. I wrote terrible stories. That's not to say I still don't, but I can at least say there's a marked improvement. But yes, of course I wrote shit. I wrote it for ten years. Maybe more. But it was the mountain I had to climb, and aside from the terrible writing aspect of it, I'm glad I did. Actually, proud that I did. Not proud enough to show you a bunch of manuscripts that will never see the light of day, but proud enough to call myself a writer. And this might be the biggest lesson anyone learns: that it's okay to write crap. Now, it might not be okay to write it and show it to other people, write it and brag that you are pure genius, write and claim that you've achieved a Herculean task just by getting words on the page. And definitely it's not okay to write it when the world and characters aren't yours and claim 99.9% of the work belongs to you because you're subtle, dammit. But I've run in to too many people who want to know what it takes to be a good writer and look like they're doing it for all the wrong reasons. Because they want love, fame, affection, praise, or validation. They can't write because if they don't get those things after the excruciating effort of writing, they'll just die. I am always, always baffled by people who want to show a rough draft. It gets me every time. Because my own rule is "When it's good enough for me, then you get to see it." Too many people write what is marketable, not necessarily what is true. Their exposure to other literature and whys and how are anemic at best, and even nonfanfiction can be pale imitations of overly rehashed ideas. But for the life of me, people, it's fine to write crap as long as you're writing. And yes, God save me, I guess that includes fanfiction (but good luck with that; my biggest objection to fanfiction is it's environment, see #1-4.) A writer is someone who has written today. No one says you have to show it to anyone.
© 2012 - 2024 Droemar
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Arhasen's avatar
Does roleplaying (i.e. "pretending") with an epic cast of various stuffed animals count? My brother and I used to create stories together, each toy playing a different role in the story. We would reenact stories we had read/watched, but we also had a collection of original stories that the toys would play out. We had some pretty vivid imaginations- there was always an active storyline, spattered with subplots from the side characters that blended rather nicely. We sometimes had trouble sharing the heroism, though the fundamental differences in our character's personalities allowed a niche for all of them to be important in one way or another. I find myself trying to recall how my brain worked as a child, as it was so easy to bend characters and plot back then. I'm not sure why... Also, I can't get over how connected my brother and I were over those games; at times, we would have very little 'planning' for the story, and just bounce off each other's play so naturally. Of course, we did have to learn to accommodate each other as we got older, and our ideas for the game became a little different. But it was still fun! :D

I'll be looking forward to a more extensive post on roleplay via internet chats!