Writing About Writing & Reading

[hermenoodle]

 Something I find to be intriguing for reviving my interest in writing is the idea of writing about writing from E. A. Everdell.  In some sense, it gets me thinking that I never really wrote about actually writing as far as my habits go.  Though, what I can think of now is that I do remember from elementary school that it was more common to actually be encouraged to write narratives, both fictional and non-fictional, just as much as some comprehension related writing about what we read.  It seems that by the time middle school came around, I was issued more essays to write rather than narratives.  If I did write any narratives, it was more so a narrative essay that had to tell some sort of thesis about the experience.  Maybe it's my brain, but I've gotten a bit tired of essays over time.  I can do them pretty well, but it's made me rusty when it comes to actually telling a story that I don't feel as confident as I used to when it comes to telling any sort of story.

 

I would only hope to aim for a better intentional practice of writing, both on my devices and on paper.  Not only to improve my form of writing, but to defeat a couple of things: my inclination to distract myself to hear other people's stories and commentaries on the likes of YouTube, quiet down my perfectionist tendencies, and also to retrain my brain while living with Long Covid issues.  YouTube commentaries coming from very intelligent people of varied backgrounds appeal to me a lot, seeing that I don't always have the most diverse population around me in a rural area.  Therefore, I'm not exposed to so many types of people en masse.  YouTube is an endless bottom pit of so many viewpoints that it can exhaust a person as much as it can to inspire them or even annoy them.  As for my own perfectionism, it's a very double edged sword on putting great effort into something to be judged well and fairly yet not managing the time to pace that effort well.  The strange thing about that sort of perfectionism is that you feel more judged on the pacing of your effort than the end result of it.  Sometimes in the past, it doesn't really matter or really show in my projects (at least academically).  Though, dealing with some emotional issues that caused that sort of perfectionist streak really helped me to see through why I was such an overachiever then.  Then, getting Long Covid definitely changed my perspective in how much I valued my brain power.  It made me realize how mortal I truly am in the last few years and how delicate my body really was compared to how I treated it growing up.  Being chronically ill isn't fun, but learning about what nourished my body well has really helped me to appreciate the things God made for me to be well (at least now, well enough to function).

 

So, what should I look forward to?  I want to really put to work on prose (mainly fictional, though non-fictional can work as well), poetry, and script writing (for comics and short films).  For most of these, I mainly want to play in my imagination the stories I've had on my heart for the longest time, even from back in high school.  Perhaps for poetry, I would love to focus on biblical figures, other historical figures, and my faith admiring them from afar or reflecting on their lives or traits.  Any non-fictional work I'd like to do, I could see in doing any sort of analysis on theology I could explore further, or even little sermons I could write for practice, especially for the youth Bible class I teach.  This would be good for accessibility and concise way of teaching such lessons without me getting long winded.  As far as theological essays go, it would be nice to explore that with some resources I have online and in the books I've been given and want to get.  Perhaps I could use Neocities and YouTube as a duo for some of those thoughts to run around.

 

Aside from that, most importantly, I need to stick to my word and anticipate doing something I love that God can work through.  If I can journal much of my artistic journey here on Dreamwidth, then writing has its place here as well.  Coding has also made such a decent mention here that I also want to try to utilize Twine and RenPy creatively as well.  There's also Blender to learn that I've been interested in, and I would love to work in that program to make some custom content and mods for the Paralives game.  In particular, I'd love to make Christian themed materials.  It was actually encouraging that I saw a YouTube comment on Paralives' recent video on the audio shops that I saw someone want Christian CC for the game.  Hopefully, if I make time for learning Blender well, maybe that person could enjoy that from me and hopefully, from others who may make similar things for the game.

 

Otherwise, I am so happy that this year has brought a lot of great blessings for my art.  I have a lot of people interested in my work, so I know I need to get onto investing some good time and even money for people to support me as they said they would and to do so confidently!  I'm so shy about this sort of thing that the one Bible verse about not hiding your light under a bushel always nags me to do better by the Lord in this respect.  He didn't give me my give to hide it, even if others online may not be thrilled about it much.  But the people I know face to face like it a lot, and I shouldn't shrug that off in denying my gift and God's glory being seen in that.

 

Even typing this entry has made me realize how much I have wasted time in not writing my work (aside from a lot of planning I have done).  I already have a good thousand words when I almost thought it'd be more than I could handle.  However, that was not the case.  I just had to dig deeper about what I wanted to elaborate about and stretch it out well.  There's nothing to be afraid about to be judged anywhere in my mind.  I just have to bring it out.  Well, it is easier when it's just a personal journal entry than a structured fictional tale, though as I know from the Bible that nothing's impossible with God.  Even a drabble or a full length multichapter story can be done.  I just need to get it out of my head that I have to do it alone.  I don't, and I never really did, even back then.