Yes, this is going to be one of those posts.
One would presume that because I am a young writer, I write all sorts of genres and mediums when, in fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
For the past four years, my writing has been in one of two different “thought camps,” as I’ll put it.
On one end, we have analytical writing, work that is produced for school, and analyzing old White people as they bicker about some issue that does not affect me nor anyone else of my generation. Oh, yes, there might be some hidden meaning. But for the most part, I am writing about another piece of writing. Usually prose or poetry, but something that could be more original and that I have little interest in. Such as writing about Jane Austen’s Emma. Quite frankly, it is just a bunch of extremely wealthy people with too much money and free time who want to accomplish anything meaningful for their lives. So they instead get involved in love games that only don’t end in disaster because they can escape at a moment’s notice.
Then we have the more well-known style that I have been writing on. These posts. Non-fiction in nature and technique. These posts have me look at an issue, place, or other proper noun and make a half-hearted argument. A notable example I’ll bring up is my Israel trips, which I am bringing up solely because I had a conversation with some people about it the other day. The post “series” is essentially just me giving a biased review and drawing the reader towards a certain side. Whether they are faced with the dilemma of going to Israel, should they go through a particular organization or not? I won’t spoil the series to attain higher numbers, but that’s the general post.
It’s not like I haven’t written published fiction. I have… sort of. I actively contributed to my middle school’s newspaper for 2.5 years, from 2017 through 2020. During that time, I wrote and released serials that were primarily science fiction. We’ll add thrillers in there for good show. But they were merely stories that I came up with on a whim and then released to a few people who cared to read them.
Before people ask: I am not planning to release those old stories. I haven’t viewed them in years and feel like I would die of immense embarrassment if I re-published them.
Since then, I have made a few forays into fiction, mostly for experimenting and for my own enjoyment. I attempted to participate in NaNoWriMo 2022 and 2023, but I lost interest within two days. Whoops.
I wrote a horrific fanfiction crossover in 2022 that was (surprisingly) well-received, and that was just a poorly edited draft. I began to rewrite it hoping to improve it but abandoned the project last year due to other commitments arising and such.
After that first crossover, I did write a few more pieces of published fanfiction on Archive of Our Own in 2023. They were decent and well-received. Once more, this was because of internal headcanons that could be fleshed out more. Then there are the dozens of unpublished works that will never see the light of day.
I now find myself taking a Creative Writing class, which is fine, but ironically enough, I feel like I am hindered in what I can write because I am in a faux-supportive environment that is merely masquerading itself against the academia behind it.
One such activity was to create a character out of the blue and then make a story resolving them. I hate the character and the story that I developed, primarily because I had no good working ideas for a short story under six pages, so I’ll put them below as I don’t consider it worthy of being under the rest of my works:
Marcus Tzion is a 17-year-old living in rural Vermont at the turn of the 20th century. He is an adopted child of the Astons, who took him under their care following the disappearance of his hipster/cultish parents. It is never specified what happened to them, but personally, the darker interpretations would be more in line.
The story revolves around Marcus’ only good friend, an old lady named Jane, the only one who told him anything more than what his parents had to offer: who is “gone” now. Whether that means dying or packing up and fleeing depends on the version. The latter was developed to appease the plot twist assignment. Whatever the case is, Mr. Aston comforts Marcus and tries to get him to stop trying to figure out what happened to his parents.
Why is he so determined? Well, he is essentially a mini-prodigy. I based him on Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. This was probably the character’s downfall, really. I designed him like one of the most annoying characters in sitcom history without offering enough of a character arc. Whoops.
Whatever the case, the story was also praised, like the rest of my work. I suppose I have a way with words. But I thought it was bad. The style might have been good, but the story itself was garbage.
Now, I believe I no longer need to deal with the story. So, I’ll write a mini “sequel” that kills off the character in a way that’s fitting for his character. I might be cruel for doing this, but I’ll at least let him go off in a way that isn’t too jarring. Maybe it’ll be the proper ending to the story; who knows? But it won’t be my issue anymore.
Alright, what about poetry? I can’t stand personally to go through line by line and write in an almost restrictive format. I could pull an E.E. Cummings move, but I am not intellectually inclined to do that. (Plus, I believe he is insane, and I
Sentences that can flow and do not need to be wildly metaphorical are my ticket into narrative. But I do have two poems written, courtesy of the poetry competition that consists of 50% of my Term 4 grade, that will probably be released in April, barring any unfortunate circumstances.
Of course, we cannot forget my writer’s block, which rears its ugly head very often. I have poems and a 200-point research paper to finish, but here I am, procrastinating because I don’t know what to write and don’t know how to go about it.
Now what? This is more of a rant into the void than anything else. But I do want to practice more fiction. Privately, of course, to begin with. Then, perhaps, once a hatchling of a story is ready, I could let it grow slowly and refine it to a level that I am comfortable with. This could take years, but hey, everyone starts somewhere. Right?
Now, back to my research paper. I’m sure we can all learn something from F. Scott Fitzgerald.
