On Writing Again

So this post is either an exercise in self-defense (of my writing), procrastination (because I'm stuck on a chapter and I'm trying to unblock) or pure page-filling. (because Blogger's default 'There's nothing here' is starting to take on the qualities of a metaphor that is, quite frankly, beginning to hurt my feelings.)

Nevertheless, I thought maybe I'd just talk about why I'm doing this, more for my own sake than anyone else's. I'll also provide background on what exactly it is that I'm doing, in case people bother to read this. Also, I clearly like telling stories, so if you're reading this you have only yourself to blame. So here we go:

In high school, my English teacher told me I had written the perfect narrative essay - that is to say, she gave me a grade of 100% for it. Now, this was a big deal at the time, because she was famous for never giving anyone a perfect grade, and she had said to me that it had literally satisfied any sort of metric she could use to judge it by. I don't think I was being humored or coddled or anything - she wasn't really the type.

That was a bit of an ego boost, I'll be honest. I excelled at a fair few of things at school, but I cannot stress how much I really didn't care about most of them. I've always loved reading, and more than an ego boost, it was inspiring to be told that maybe I could create things that I loved like that. I'm happiest reading, but sometimes I construct a story in my head and I really want it down on paper. (In a metaphorical sense - digitally is okay too.)

I was also dealing, at the time, with my BIG SECRET. If you're coming from my stories, it's probably no surprise that the secret was me being gay. (If you're not here from my stories - Huh, you have weird browsing habits and I'd love to hear about them.) 

Anyway, young gay me had a newfound love and confidence for writing, a secret he couldn't tell anyone about  - including relationships and thoughts wrapped up in that secret - and a knowledge of where to find gay erotica online (because there wasn't that much free porn back then, and my internet connection was lousy.)

I think I might have embarrassingly completed a chapter of someone else's fan fiction and emailed it to them, which is mortifying now that I think about it. I don't think it was confidence - I just had no ideas where the appropriate boundaries should have been. I remember the reaction was kind but baffled - to be honest, probably exactly how I'd respond to that sort of thing happening to me. After that incident, however, I eventually figured out I should just write my own stories. 

I wrote something called Another Day, which is high school garbage (no offense if you liked it, but it causes me pain to read it now) which I think makes pretty clear I had, at that point, never touched another human being sexually or drunk a drop of alcohol. (Maybe my rewrite won't successfully make you believe that I have now, but at least it will be due to the quality of my writing now.) 

Sometime later I wrote another story called Perfection is Overrated, which I'm marginally proud of, although it has numerous flaws. I never successfully completed either.

For various reasons, I stopped writing. The main one is that I was busy getting a STEM degree, and the courses were rough. Also, being in that field, I tried to focus on productive hobbies - stuff that I could maybe put on a CV one day. I wasn't subduing my passions to be practical or anything tragic like that. I was just focusing on those passions that happened to be practical. Writing wasn't, so it fell by the wayside. 

The other main reason, is that the distinct lack of experience that (I feel) makes Another Day so hard for me to read is exactly what was opening up to me at the time, in real life. I could drink and I could make out with guys (among other things) and that was a little more exciting at the time than longingly gazing out the window and writing down things that I wished would have happened to me.

That excitement also wore off quickly, because as any gay guy who's out there and dating knows - fuck, trying to find love is exhausting. Any person, I suppose, as I have it on good authority that straights aren't doing so hot either. Yay equality.

Anyway, I've had a lot of time to mull over my writing since. It's always been something I wanted to revisit, but after I got my degree I signed up for a masters degree, which was great fun and took me all over the world doing fun projects, but did drag on for way too long. I finally graduated last year.

Over the course of my masters degree, I was already planning a rewrite of Perfection is Overrated. I'd grown enough as a person and a writer in the intervening time that I really thought I could do the story more justice, and finish it this time. I didn't get around to it - fortunately, actually, because it was a procrastination tactic when I should have been working on my thesis.

I'll gloss over the pandemic, because I clearly didn't dive right in and take advantage from the get-go. I did a lot of cleaning and organizing, but I also did a lot of video game playing, reading, napping and some good old fashioned nothing. But my writing eventually circled back around as a to-do.

I'd honestly never intended to rewrite Another Day. I had just assumed it was unsalvageable - I'd written it as a sort of expression of longing for things I'd never have, and once I'd gotten those things in real life it became harder to identify with the lonely teenager who'd written them. Additionally, my characterization is a mess, my editing is sloppy - to the point where I'm wondering how bad my spellcheck program used to be - and my chapters are very inconsistent in length.

The pandemic, and the tense wait for my masters to finally be over, gave me time to mull over some of the things that did and didn't happen to me when I was out in the world 'living', and how I'd interpreted and processed those events (after the fact and in no particular order) to come to terms with friendship and love - and just life in general, I guess. 

I don't want to call it an epiphany, because it happened slowly, but it eventually dawned on me that I could keep that sense of longing in the story, without letting it drive it, if I replaced it with the sense of context I now have from all the things that happened to me. I mulled over it some more - I do a lot of mulling - and a plot arc for the story formed in my head. The more I picked at it, the more I realized I  would be able to incorporate everything I wanted it to, while still holding true to the original story (more or less).

So in March, I think I began to write all my thoughts about down, and by the middle of April I was pumping out chapters with a level of productivity that I probably have my masters degree to thank for, although this was a lot more fun to do. I have completed the first 12 chapters of my Another Day rewrite, which I'm going to be calling One More Year. Mostly just because I want something symbolic of the differences in motivation of the new story.

My goal here is to do a few things. The first thing is to improve my writing. Another day is special to me, but it's by no means my most sentimental or ambitious planned piece of writing, so I'll be able to cope with it being out in the world without being 'perfect', and my ego can (Probably?) take the blows of constructive criticism about it. 

The second thing is to just test the waters, see if anyone still wants my writing. I managed, to my shock, to accrue a non-zero number of fans back in the day, so I wonder if I still can. I'd love to write professionally, since I enjoy it so much, and thanks to the pandemic, this has shaped up to be a rare opportunity for me to find out if I actually can do that.

The last thing is to get a sense of order in my life, which has been lacking it for much longer than the pandemic. Writing a thesis was a special kind of slow, oppressive chaos, and it hasn't exactly helped to come out of that into this brave new world where a handshake can kill you and meetings take place in pajamas.

If you've actually read all of this - wow, thanks. You must have a high tolerance for lengthy, narcissistic rants. 

Photo by Laura Chouette