This timing couldn’t be worse.
I had already bopped out 1,300 words on an entirely different topic when I saw, like, a day or three ago, that an important date was fast approaching.
…
Wait a second. Think.
…
Oh shoot, it’s already been an entire year that this website has existed!
(Maybe not an entire year that it has been adequately supported and maintained, but we’ll get into that later.)
Yeah, it’s true! It’s been a year since I decided to buckle down and create a website with murky goals and unmet expectations, thus far, at least.
I’m really not entirely sure what to write about here, but it feels like this deserves notice. And maybe some retrospection.
(You ever just write a word, think it looks and sounds nice and feel good about yourself but before you continue on with your story, you double-click, hit ctrl+c and slam it down into another tab just to make sure it is what you think it is? Yeah, me neither.)
I started building this website shortly before I started really trying to better myself physically – you know, running and eating better and beating my ghosts – so, that’s around mid-April 2019. I’d always wanted to carve out a little spot of my own – mostly to showcase my journalistic side – and initially this website was to
1. Function as a living resume that everyone – mostly employers – had access to; and
2. Encourage me to get back into my groove and write.
That has changed.
I felt like if I brought people along on the journey, or at least invited them to look at what I was up to, I’d take it more seriously.
Yeah, that didn’t work out so much. What started out with the best intentions for myself quickly turned into an unfun grind that took way more out of me than I was ever getting back.
But, I mean, I can’t act like there was never any content I produced here that some people didn’t really enjoy. But I also can’t act like there’s been this deluge of amazing stuff that makes up for the months that I flat out ignored this space.
That said, I feel like maybe I can win some of that trust back.
Especially trust in myself.
I realized, pretty quickly actually, that I was writing more for an audience that didn’t yet exist and less for myself, instead of writing for myself and letting an audience spring up organically. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do whatever I can to encourage folks to look at my work, but it also means that I don’t need to be a slave to the whims of analytics and SEO. (But, you know, I can use those tools here and there to give myself a helping hand.)
You might have noticed, I mean probably not but maybe, that I’ve been updating a few of the Storyganks. Quick reminder, that’s where I take a more reporter-y outlook, for better or worse, on the stories of the media I consume. And so far, Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Destiny have both had their stories touched up. In the case of Fire Emblem, it was minor touches for clarity and a few additions for a better cohesive, I don’t know, argument? Whatever. It’s better now and might get a more thorough do-over, (update: It did.) much like how Destiny received.
My poor, poor little Destiny story. He tried so hard. So very hard.
I’ve got this thing that once I publish a story, it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind and left to the whims of critics who can read it as much as they want to because odds are, I’ll never look at it again. It’s already pretty taxing to go through the editing process and come face-to-face with my shortcomings.
And that’s how it always feels.
(It’s called killing your darlings for a reason, you know?)
But I’m taking my work back from myself.
In the case of Destiny, it got a full makeover. If you liked the previous story, well, bless your heart and thank you so much! But you were wrong to like it. It wasn’t bad, but oh man, it wasn’t what it needed to be. I’d really let myself down when I read through it again.
But I read through it again. That’s the first step.
That letdown came partly from this unreal expectation of myself to constantly churn out in-depth analyses of stories that needed more time than I was giving them for the sake of living up to my self-imposed schedules and deadlines, rather than working on them in a structured environment that was conducive to good work and enjoyable typing sessions.
Realization. That’s step two.
Destiny’s rewrite might still have errors and goofs somewhere in there, but now I can face them because they’re probably subjective at this point. That story had almost eight hours of editing alone. But it was kind of, dare I say, fun, to go through that process?
Action. Third step.
At one point, I was just sitting back in my chair, sipping good, good brown water coffee and reading the same series of paragraphs for what felt like an hour (it very well might have been), trying to piece together what was wrong.
I knew something was off, but couldn’t quite place it. I knew I liked the content that was there, the words worked well together, but given what I’d already fixed and improved upon, it couldn’t stay where it was. I knew the issue was structural in its nature and that while it could live in the story, it couldn’t live there.
And it was pretty satisfying to finally find the interior where its edges fit nicely into the story’s puzzle.
Acceptance. Final step.
I’m not exactly certain if I’ll give my Adventures a makeover at this point, but I’m not ruling that out. They likely need some work too and I feel like if I’m not creating new content for my readers, (no, for myself, remember? We went over this!) then at least I can work on what I’ve already created and make it the best it can be. No deadlines. No pressure. No fanfare or begging people to look at it like it’s a new addition through Facebook or Twitter. Just something to work on and feel enjoyment from.
Imagine that. Enjoyment from writing?
I won’t be touching up any of my blogs though. That’s a decision I’ve already made and one I fully intend to stick with. My reasoning is that blogs, despite how casually I approach them, are far more personal endeavors and my mistakes and whoopsie-doodles in there show growth. Heck, even re-reading my Destiny story really showed my growth as a writer in that almost-year since I published it.
(Seriously, go back and see what my blogs started out as a year ago compared to this one. Even the three most recent ones since my return in March are way different than what I was putting out when I left in August. That could be from a number of things: initially starting and figuring out my groove for a schedule, finally casting off those grindy shackles, becoming more confident in my own work, a combination of those or something else entirely.)
One thing that hasn’t changed in these blogs, though, is a constant chase of self-improvement. I’ve been pretty consistent in challenging myself and trying to grow.
And growth is something I’ve always felt weirdly about when it comes to my writing. Especially when re-reading my stuff. It’s probably why I don’t like to do it very much. But there’s a reason for it, and it’s not from a fear of thinking it isn’t good enough. If anything, the “fear” is that it’s already pretty good. And that means I’ve plateaued.
Reading old content and thinking it’s good makes me feel like I’ve not improved since whenever I wrote it, you know? Reading something I thought was good then and disliking it now means I’ve gotten better since, yeah?
But isn't that a self-inflicted, self-sustained and inherently negative process?
Sometimes I come across a story that has me thinking, even years later, that dang, this is pretty good. Fun fact: this sentence was originally written in the second-person perspective, but I realized that I do that a lot and probably in error. This might not be something you can relate with, so I went first-person. I should work on that.
That happened with one short story, you know, (I do that a lot too) that, even years later, somehow still stands on its own.
It’s called Comfort and yeah, I’ll say it. It’s really good.
Could it use some work? Of course. But, by and large, it still holds up. And rather than feeling inadequacy from that, I feel something else. Validation? That even back then I was capable of banging out at least one decent story? I studied creative writing for crying out loud. There’s bound to have been something from then that I could hang my hat on, right?
Even if it is from college, I wrote it during a time in my life where I needed to write it. I’ll probably never share it with anyone. That might change, but if you were one of the lucky few, and I do mean few, who sat in my short-story course in 2009 or whatever, and got to read it, way to go! You might be the last audience it ever gets.
Oh, actually, I vaguely remember reading it aloud during an open-mic night back then too. Probably not the best story to read out loud to people oh my god what was I thinking, but it was such a satisfying rush to write and read and share that. To write, read and share those emotions.
I needed it.
And I still, even now, feel that satisfaction when reading though it again. It takes me back to that time, which isn’t exactly a happy moment, but one that showed my strength to overcome, honestly, myself.
And I miss that feeling.
That feeling where writing is done for me and folks just happen to be along for the ride rather than the other way – where I’m just writing for them.
It felt that way all the time in Wyoming, and that was a bad time. But, you know, in journalism, we are writing for an audience who doesn’t appreciate the garbage that we go through for them who rely on our information. It’s far different from creative works, but the grind of it all was overwhelming.
That grind, combined with, you know, (really?) all the terrible things that happened, both within and outside of my control, led to where I am now. Which isn’t exactly a bad place, and I’m grateful, but that’s a story that’ll never be told for another time.
I do want to introduce a new section to the website, a tab that’ll be called Lore. You might already know me as a giant fanboy of Destiny, its universe and how it approaches world-building and how everything can exist within it because of how its writers have approached it.
It’s fascinating. It’s downright inspiring to me. So, I want to do it.
It’s gonna be mostly vignettes and snips and snaps of pieces of various worlds that I find myself in. Sometimes that’ll be in the universe of Destiny, or another form of media, but also, on occasion, my own original creative works.
I know, right? Sharing my own creative universes with people? Madness. What am I thinking?!
The fun thing about how the Lore tab is going to work is that there’s no guaranteed follow-up. These are self-contained narratives with a chance for expansion later, but it’s largely going to be just glimpses of what the world is. Meeting characters suddenly with no background or being introduced to concepts and ideas that haven’t been fully explained or explored yet. And it’s up to me, the writer, to make it work and not be a convoluted mess.
It’s going to feel a lot like flash-fiction, something I love. And sometimes it isn’t going to make sense until other entries get added, and sometimes even then it won’t, but it’s meant to be a living document that shows that I can do what I know I can do.
This’ll be partly for fun, because having already written a few of these, they have been; partly as a way to show I can still write creatively (I’ve got plans, dang it!) and partly as practice for my aforementioned original works (again, there’s plans!)
I hope you enjoy it, but for the first time, I’m not banking on that. I hope you’ll come along for the ride, but I’m not going to feel down about myself if you don’t. No, for the first time ever for this website, and for the first time in a while for myself, the writings contained here will be for me.
That said, if you feel an urge to support me in this, I won’t turn you away. Who knows? Maybe the more I care about myself and my work, the better you all will enjoy it.
A lot of times, I wonder who these blogs are written for. As I already mentioned, they feel intensely personal for me. Pretty often I feel a hiccup in my throat, a tightness in my chest when I go to push publish on a Storygank or Adventure. But I never feel that for a blog.
Is that because I subconsciously view it as just an exercise? Something to keep my hands busy, something to let readers know what I’m up to, something to remind myself what I am, can be and have been doing?
Yeah. They’re something like that. It’s just me writing casually. For the sake of writing.
I guess I’ve never really considered it.
But I need more of that. That carefree feeling of contentment when I press the publish button.
It’s fun.
Hey, thanks for the talk.
Hey, happy anniversary.