This post is gonna be about me and writing, but I'm gonna start it off with something a little different first!!
This is one of two mixes I made ft some of my absolutely favorite songs!! You can find the other one here. (The photography is by me, btw!!) -- I figured that since this series was about me, I might as well share my favorite music! I think you can learn a lot about someone based on the kind of music they listen to, honestly. Maybe that's not true, but, well! Moving on!!
Also I guess this post is a little fitting today because we started NaNoWriMo, lol. Not that I'm officially doing it this year (I... I may have created a counter for a big Undertale fic, though) or that this post has anything to do with Nano besides being about writing, but, STILL.
*clears throat*
I've been writing about since I was 7? Or, how I generally phrase it: "story telling since age 7, successfully writing since age 13."
I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of play pretend and make believe, and creating stories was second nature to me. I did it with my sister. I did it with my friends. I did it on the playground.
Whether it was the Game or it was messing around with LEGOs, or running around on the playground pretending to be Princess Peach, or swapping stories with my bffe (who I met at age 8, and we're inseperable!) in her backyard while laying on her trampoline... We both had universes inside of our heads. We both were burning to get them out.
My older sister started writing probably when I was 10 or so?? I wanted to be like her. I had so many stories inside of me and I thought, "hey, I love reading, and I can write, anyone can write, that's how I'll get all the stories out."
Writing wasn't really a "I want to be an author when I grow up", writing was just... second nature.
At age 12 I thought that writing fifty novels was a totally feasible and realistic goal. (And, maybe it still is -- but it's definitely not when your characters in each novel are carbon copies of each other and you never consider much outside the setting and the world for them, never the plot.) Honestly, I started that probably at age 9. And, I did write! I started and got twenty pages written of at least fifteen separate stories. I just never finished them.
The first story I finished was the Truth Hurts, a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction. And, that, more than anything else, was what really got me into the groove of not just writing things, but finishing things. I don't know why I managed to finish that one. Maybe it was because I had so many people online wanting to know what would happen next. Maybe it was because my sister supported me the whole way. I don't know.
But I did finish it.
And finishing a story, in itself, is a shocking and terrible power, a huge source of confidence. I've finished one. I can finish another.
Falling to Pieces, the sequel to the Truth Hurts, wasn't much more, objectively, than a rehash of Kingdom Hearts 1's plot with the characters mixed around, and maybe that's why it was so easy to finish. But it did get finished.
I've finished two. I can finish another.
Nothing's Fair was a week's worth twenty page mess of a thing, but it, too, was something completed from start to finish. None of these stories were, are, perfect. I know they're not perfect. But for a 13 year old? They were good.
And, to toot my own horn for a second. The Truth Hurts, Falling to Pieces, and Nothing's Fair were all written in the span of seven months, and total, are about 80k words. That's not just good. That's impressive.
Dead Inside took me three years to write, and I learned so so so much from doing it. Objectively, it's not that great, especially when it comes to pacing and quality, but it is this: 40k+ words and 1000 pages. Perfect? No. But also pretty damn impressive.
This past year (a little more than?) has been spent largely on writing All that Remains, sequel to Dead Inside and final of the FtPverse series. But, I also rewrote Nothing's Fair (it's 1000x better now) and a 15k Kairi fic for a Kairi movement I started. And I've also written a lot of short oneshot fics since then, including five for UNDERTALE in the past month.
And, idk if that means anything to you, but, the point is:
Writing means so much to me.
I was born and raised as a person with stories to tell, and it was only natural I'd slip into writing from there (it's not like I ever had the patience to pursue drawing or art of any sort, so my stories weren't getting told that way.) -- I've written sooo much, and it's just, second nature now. It's habit. If I don't write, it's like? lol?? Who am I??
I'm someone with stories to tell and the tools to write them, the experience and dedication and gift to be able to weave words into a story, into people and their lives and their worlds and it's.... It's a really wonderful gift. I'm so glad to have it. I'm so glad to be this person.
I love to write, so much.
So much.
~
Curious to read some of my work? It's all fanfic, but you can find the entire FtPverse series here on my FFN profile, along with some other, fics I've written!
And you can check out my AO3, which holds my more-recent work (that I'm much more proud of comparatively to anything on FFN, FtPverse aside) and all the Undertale fics I've posted and will post in the future.
Check em out!
