Writing

I'm not writing as much as I used to.

I have decided to write about this.

When I first started writing for my own pleasure, rather than a school assignment or something, I was in seventh. I had enjoyed writing sometimes before then, but I had not written much in my free time. I think I mostly wanted a solitary activity where I could be emotional and quiet. I had just gone through a break-up, and it was...weird, and I wanted to work out why on my own a bit without anyone else's thoughts interfering.* If I did something communal, people would ask why I was so emotional, and if I did something loud, people would come to check on me.

I was also writing a story where the heroine got together with a person who was basically a hodgepodge of a bunch of characteristics I found attractive. I realized this pretty immediately, shrugged, and kept writing. I wasn't writing to make a good story. I was writing because I wanted an outlet. I don't see the shame in writing wish fulfillment when that is literally all I had set out to do.

Granted, a few of the characteristics had less to do with me finding them attractive and more to do with being the opposite of the guy who had just broken up with me but hush.

My writing stayed in about that space for a while. I theoretically still have a bunch of documents which follow an even less organized format than that first story--there, I at least made everything about the same couple characters. Later documents are separated only into "this one has all random ideas that came to me" and "this is me explicitly creating a fantasy world to play in because I want to have interactions which happen only on my terms." The former tended to have characters with personality, while the latter...didn't. Or rather, a character's personality would vary from writing to writing, with only a few characteristics actually staying consistent, and the rest changing to fit whatever I wanted to happen.

I started writing more regularly when I started this blog. I could not tell you whether I wrote more, but I did start writing at a more consistently, and I started finishing more things, rather than just writing the introductions to essays or three scenes from a story that should be novel-length. I still do that, but I have a tendency to finish the things I want to spend times on, rather than only the ones that are assigned to me.

The consistency increased somewhere around 2010/2012, when I was in a class where we had to write something every week, called a portfolio piece. I learned that I liked doing that. I decided to go with that theme and try to write one thing every week for this blog. I kept that up for some time. I even built up a little buffer--two or three posts ahead of me. It got to the point where I would stress a little when there was only one post cued, though earlier in this blog's history I wrote almost every post the day of--I had based the format on a school assignment, after all.

I wrote weekly on this blog, and more outside it. I did end up using school projects occasionally, but most of the time I tried to avoid cross-posting in that way unless I adored what I had made. I did not keep up the same rules for college essays--probably a good thing. I did not have time to practice my songs, do my homework, write the applications, take the SATs, and write something decent for this blog.

November of 2012, I did NaNoWriMo. I built up a buffer that lasted through the month of November, and I remember relaxing when I succeeded in doing so, because it meant I could focus on my novel. I mean, I didn't, but I had the option.

The end of November isn't when I stopped updating this blog weekly, but it's when it started feeling significantly difficult. It was probably more difficult than it had been the first few weeks I tried it--those were no picnic, but at least I could see myself getting better, not worse. This blog started being stressful, when it was supposed to be fun and interesting, when it was supposed to be, at its best, informative and interesting, and at its worst, an outlet for exactly the sort of feelings it was now causing.

So I dropped it. And I miss it, a bit. Not the stress, nor exactly the writing, because I still write a little. But I miss having a schedule that I would keep to every week, because it was fun to be able to justify the prioritization which I would like to give to my writing.

I'm going to see if I can ease back into writing. Maybe I'll go back to musings, like these.

I do like writing.

* We had been good friends beforehand and he broke up with me in such a way that it was abundantly clear that he was not telling the truth about why he was breaking up with me. Because of that and some associated stuff, I thought he didn't want to hang out anymore. Spoilers: He wasn't telling the truth. But I don't exactly begrudge him not coming out in eighth grade.