Write! In the Middle of My Life #1: In Which I Give You an Overview of My Past and Present Writing Endeavors

Hello, Bookish Buddies, and welcome to something new! I’m calling this series Write! In the Middle of My Life, because as those of us who like to write for fun know, writing is very time consuming and it often gets put on the back burner. With these posts, I’m hoping to bring writing back into my life, as I now have an audience that expects updates.

You see, the times when I write are usually the times when I have support to do so. Whether it be from sad little girls who knew not of literature of higher quality than crappy fan fiction I wrote in eighth grade, or from my creative writing teacher (shout out to Mr. R, he’s really cool) who is actually grading me on my writing. So now that I have a blog with a decently sized following of people who share my love of literature, I thought this could be the support system I need to restore my former motivation.  So let’s start from the beginning.

At the tail end of seventh grade (like the last few days), my best friend introduced me to an app that changed my life: wattpad.  From there, I started reading on wattpad, and then getting so enthused that I started my own story.  From the summer before eighth grade to the beginning of the second semester of ninth grade, I wrote a ton of crappy fan fiction.  My “debut” was finished at 80k words, my sophomore at 60k.  I think I had three more going when I quit.  I lost my passion for writing fan fiction because it felt juvenile, so I stopped.  Now, I refuse to go on wattpad because 1) I never want to see my cringe fan fictions again, and 2) very, very complicated social reasons.  So I took a year and a half long writing hiatus.

Meanwhile, each year of high school, I had been signing up for creative writing and getting put in another class because it always filled up really fast. In my junior year, I got into the class.  And it was great.  The class was chill, my teacher was super cool, and I even got to become the essential leader of the class by becoming co editor-in-chief this coming year.  However, I never wrote with that same passion I used to in eighth grade.  I completed my assignments (save for one screenplay that tortured me to no end because I hate screenplay format), but did no more.

In the recent few months, I attempted Camp NaNoWriMo in April, and then again this month, but I haven’t made much progress.  That leaves us at where we are now.  I have ideas for a six book series kind of thing (I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on the blog before, but I’ll mention it again now if I have).  It’s basically going to be six different stories of the same school year, from six unique points of view.  I vaguely know my characters, and I have a vague storyline, but that’s it.  It’s intimidating to start a new project.  For me, I really need to get to know my characters before I start writing about them, so that being said, I would still consider myself in the brainstorming process.

So yeah, those are my novel ideas, and I have one more thing to share. I have signed up for May @ Forever and Everly’s Scribbler’s Challenge because 1) it sounded epic, and 2) lord knows I could use a critique partner. I hope this allows me to gain writing buddies and allow me to dabble in different genres outside my comfort zone. I’m super excited for this challenge and I encourage everyone to sign up.

There are my writerly rambles. If you read all the way to here, you’re super cool. I hope all of the above content entertained you.  I want to talk to you in the comments! Tell me about your writing life! Any tips you may have would be greatly appreciated.