FA+
Shop
Why I Stopped Writing for a Long Time & Why I Started Again
11 years ago
"I doubt myself because, if I don't, I'll become complacent, and if I become complacent, I'll stop trying harder. And I always want to try my best."
That quote up there is from a response of mine to a comment someone left on a story I wrote back in the summer of 2012. I randomly came across it earlier today while looking over some of my own work, and I figured that it perfectly explains not only why I wanted to get back into writing, but also why I stopped in the first place.
In January 2013, I released Summerhill, my third novel, through the fine folks over at
FurPlanet. This was a book that was an arduous effort, to say the least; I spent a good three years on it, trying to turn a weird short story into an (arguably) even weirder novel, and I rewrote the whole thing from scratch I think somewhere around three times (it got hard to keep track after a while). I semi-jokingly told my good friend and colleague 
kyell that it was going to be the book that either made me or destroyed me.
In the more than year and a half since the book's release, I've never been able to tell, to my own satisfaction, whether I finally released it because I thought it was ready, or because I was sick of working on it and didn't think it was going to ever be any better than it already was (if you're a writer and you're not completely full of yourself, you might know what that feels like). Either way, at first, I was very pleased that the book was being pretty well received, but that was short-lived for a few reasons.
First, while I was hearing a lot of positive things about it, all of my fellow writers were mostly lukewarm on it. Their criticisms were all legitimate, mind you; I was upset not because they had issues with it, but because I had allowed it to go on to be 'finished' without those issues being addressed. Sure, some people might try to say that furry writing doesn't have (or doesn't need) high standards like 'real' writing does, but I disagree completely, and wouldn't be proud of selling myself short even if I did agree.
In any event, responses to the book came in one of two basic forms:
"There are some pretty interesting ideas here, and I think I see where you were going with it, but the story isn't terribly coherent and I think the whole thing needs to be tightened up."
"Oh my god this as great it had a cute otter in it and I love otters murr~"
Now, I'm not saying that cute otters are a bad reason to like something (I'm a fan of them, myself), but when you spend three years trying to tell a story about a quest for identity across multiple universes and the power of imagination having the ability to reshape reality, "oh murr otters" isn't exactly where one hopes all that effort brought them.
And then I got arrested.
I'm not going to go into it here; the details are out there if anyone wants to go look for them, but the important thing for this story is just that I was arrested at all. As you can imagine, being arrested and winding up with a criminal record are very traumatic things to happen, and they certainly do a number to one's self-worth and self-esteem, which in my case already weren't terribly high to begin with.
I call out Summerhill above, specifically, but it all goes deeper than that. For years--pretty much since I was working on The Seventh Chakra back in 2009 or so--writing had become an uphill battle for me that I rarely won, and in the past year or so, it had only gotten more pronounced. I had a novella that I made it through three half-drafts of before giving up on it, and then I started a replacement novella, wrote a few partial drafts of that, and then gave up on that, as well. Nothing I did was working for me, and nothing had been working for years. Putting more effort into things didn't make them turn out better; it just made me that much more upset with myself when I still invariably failed.
And yeah, then I got arrested, and at that point, mentally, I couldn't do it anymore. I wrote one final thing as a sort of stream of consciousness exercise, purging some of the thoughts that wouldn't stop bounding around inside my head, and I just stopped. I dropped out of my writing workshop, I stopped reading and proofing my friends' stories, and I basically wanted to forget that I ever wasted years of my life on something that only frustrated me and made me unhappy.
Over the next few months, something I didn't expect happened: the act of not writing actually stuck. Not only did it stick, it felt great. Not having to worry myself with this hobby-turned-pseudo-career anymore made me feel like a million bucks, and I couldn't remember why I'd ever put myself through so much emotional torment by forcing myself to do something I didn't even enjoy doing.
Every so often, someone would pay me a compliment on something, usually Summerhill, and I'd just kind of neutrally thank them for it while inwardly resenting the fact that other people had the ability to like something I wish I'd never spent three years writing. And here and there, people would ask me how my writing was going, when it had been a year-plus since I had written anything, and then I'd get annoyed because it was like people didn't even care enough to pay attention to what I was doing; it just came off as "Oh, I don't actually read any of the garbage you write, but asking about it seems like a polite thing to do."
And of course I know, intellectually, that that's not what those people were actually saying or thinking, but given my mindset, the brain can really twist shit into what it wants to hear.
Anyhow, moving on to late 2013: I wound up being the translator for Yu Godai's Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner, Vol. 1. I honestly don't think this could have come at a better time, either professionally (my actual job is, for those of you who don't know, as a Japanese translator) or for my personal mindset on writing. I'd been a professional translator for a decade, but never for long-form fiction (or hell, even short-form), and so it was a unique challenge, but one I'm glad I rose to.
In a way, it was like the best of both worlds: I got to enjoy the fun part of writing (i.e., the words and shit) without having to worry about whether the characters were garbage or if the plot sucked ass because hey, that part was already set and done.
Translation wrapped up in late January, but the full impact of the experience didn't really hit me until midsummer. There were two big contributing factors:
1) I finished reading the other four books in the series.
2) The translation of the first volume was released at the end of July.
And I guess something happened then, and I think that something is that I remembered how gratifying and exciting it could be to help bring a story to people. Being a translator was sort of like being Blade: I had all of the strengths but none of the weaknesses; I could legitimately be a fan of a story, and use that enthusiasm to fuel my attempts to bring that story to others, and oh, it felt--and still does feel--wonderful.
I'm not sure if there's any one thing that made me want to suck it up and get back into personal writing again. Probably it was a number of little things, one of which was helping kyell with some more Cupcakes stuff. And maybe just wanting to recapture what it was like to have fun, like I used to all those years ago.
So yeah, last week my otter-self posted a story, my first story that's seen the light of day since "False Doctrine" in 2013's What Happens Next? And I'll probably crank out a few more quick things in the coming weeks just to stretch my mental muscles, as it were, and get back into it.
I'm not sure entirely why I'm writing this. Maybe I feel like I owe people an explanation. Maybe I feel like I owe the people who stuck with me an apology for being such an ass and I wanted them to see where I was coming from. Maybe I just need to get shit off my chest. Whatever the case is, here it is, me and my mind and stuff.
Thanks for sticking with me. Er, through this post, I mean. It's kind of a wall of text, I know.
It's okay for me to doubt myself. It's okay to not want to be complacent. And maybe it's okay to take a break, and maybe I just needed one. But I shouldn't just stop trying forever.
That quote up there is from a response of mine to a comment someone left on a story I wrote back in the summer of 2012. I randomly came across it earlier today while looking over some of my own work, and I figured that it perfectly explains not only why I wanted to get back into writing, but also why I stopped in the first place.
In January 2013, I released Summerhill, my third novel, through the fine folks over at
FurPlanet. This was a book that was an arduous effort, to say the least; I spent a good three years on it, trying to turn a weird short story into an (arguably) even weirder novel, and I rewrote the whole thing from scratch I think somewhere around three times (it got hard to keep track after a while). I semi-jokingly told my good friend and colleague 
kyell that it was going to be the book that either made me or destroyed me.In the more than year and a half since the book's release, I've never been able to tell, to my own satisfaction, whether I finally released it because I thought it was ready, or because I was sick of working on it and didn't think it was going to ever be any better than it already was (if you're a writer and you're not completely full of yourself, you might know what that feels like). Either way, at first, I was very pleased that the book was being pretty well received, but that was short-lived for a few reasons.
First, while I was hearing a lot of positive things about it, all of my fellow writers were mostly lukewarm on it. Their criticisms were all legitimate, mind you; I was upset not because they had issues with it, but because I had allowed it to go on to be 'finished' without those issues being addressed. Sure, some people might try to say that furry writing doesn't have (or doesn't need) high standards like 'real' writing does, but I disagree completely, and wouldn't be proud of selling myself short even if I did agree.
In any event, responses to the book came in one of two basic forms:
"There are some pretty interesting ideas here, and I think I see where you were going with it, but the story isn't terribly coherent and I think the whole thing needs to be tightened up."
"Oh my god this as great it had a cute otter in it and I love otters murr~"
Now, I'm not saying that cute otters are a bad reason to like something (I'm a fan of them, myself), but when you spend three years trying to tell a story about a quest for identity across multiple universes and the power of imagination having the ability to reshape reality, "oh murr otters" isn't exactly where one hopes all that effort brought them.
And then I got arrested.
I'm not going to go into it here; the details are out there if anyone wants to go look for them, but the important thing for this story is just that I was arrested at all. As you can imagine, being arrested and winding up with a criminal record are very traumatic things to happen, and they certainly do a number to one's self-worth and self-esteem, which in my case already weren't terribly high to begin with.
I call out Summerhill above, specifically, but it all goes deeper than that. For years--pretty much since I was working on The Seventh Chakra back in 2009 or so--writing had become an uphill battle for me that I rarely won, and in the past year or so, it had only gotten more pronounced. I had a novella that I made it through three half-drafts of before giving up on it, and then I started a replacement novella, wrote a few partial drafts of that, and then gave up on that, as well. Nothing I did was working for me, and nothing had been working for years. Putting more effort into things didn't make them turn out better; it just made me that much more upset with myself when I still invariably failed.
And yeah, then I got arrested, and at that point, mentally, I couldn't do it anymore. I wrote one final thing as a sort of stream of consciousness exercise, purging some of the thoughts that wouldn't stop bounding around inside my head, and I just stopped. I dropped out of my writing workshop, I stopped reading and proofing my friends' stories, and I basically wanted to forget that I ever wasted years of my life on something that only frustrated me and made me unhappy.
Over the next few months, something I didn't expect happened: the act of not writing actually stuck. Not only did it stick, it felt great. Not having to worry myself with this hobby-turned-pseudo-career anymore made me feel like a million bucks, and I couldn't remember why I'd ever put myself through so much emotional torment by forcing myself to do something I didn't even enjoy doing.
Every so often, someone would pay me a compliment on something, usually Summerhill, and I'd just kind of neutrally thank them for it while inwardly resenting the fact that other people had the ability to like something I wish I'd never spent three years writing. And here and there, people would ask me how my writing was going, when it had been a year-plus since I had written anything, and then I'd get annoyed because it was like people didn't even care enough to pay attention to what I was doing; it just came off as "Oh, I don't actually read any of the garbage you write, but asking about it seems like a polite thing to do."
And of course I know, intellectually, that that's not what those people were actually saying or thinking, but given my mindset, the brain can really twist shit into what it wants to hear.
Anyhow, moving on to late 2013: I wound up being the translator for Yu Godai's Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner, Vol. 1. I honestly don't think this could have come at a better time, either professionally (my actual job is, for those of you who don't know, as a Japanese translator) or for my personal mindset on writing. I'd been a professional translator for a decade, but never for long-form fiction (or hell, even short-form), and so it was a unique challenge, but one I'm glad I rose to.
In a way, it was like the best of both worlds: I got to enjoy the fun part of writing (i.e., the words and shit) without having to worry about whether the characters were garbage or if the plot sucked ass because hey, that part was already set and done.
Translation wrapped up in late January, but the full impact of the experience didn't really hit me until midsummer. There were two big contributing factors:
1) I finished reading the other four books in the series.
2) The translation of the first volume was released at the end of July.
And I guess something happened then, and I think that something is that I remembered how gratifying and exciting it could be to help bring a story to people. Being a translator was sort of like being Blade: I had all of the strengths but none of the weaknesses; I could legitimately be a fan of a story, and use that enthusiasm to fuel my attempts to bring that story to others, and oh, it felt--and still does feel--wonderful.
I'm not sure if there's any one thing that made me want to suck it up and get back into personal writing again. Probably it was a number of little things, one of which was helping
kyell with some more Cupcakes stuff. And maybe just wanting to recapture what it was like to have fun, like I used to all those years ago.So yeah, last week my otter-self posted a story, my first story that's seen the light of day since "False Doctrine" in 2013's What Happens Next? And I'll probably crank out a few more quick things in the coming weeks just to stretch my mental muscles, as it were, and get back into it.
I'm not sure entirely why I'm writing this. Maybe I feel like I owe people an explanation. Maybe I feel like I owe the people who stuck with me an apology for being such an ass and I wanted them to see where I was coming from. Maybe I just need to get shit off my chest. Whatever the case is, here it is, me and my mind and stuff.
Thanks for sticking with me. Er, through this post, I mean. It's kind of a wall of text, I know.
It's okay for me to doubt myself. It's okay to not want to be complacent. And maybe it's okay to take a break, and maybe I just needed one. But I shouldn't just stop trying forever.
Sharing your experience is really helpful, and really insightful for some of us on-again, off-again amateur writer types. Reading your comments on this stuff gives me hope that I can accomplish things but also helps temper that writer complacency we all fear in a *constructive* way. SO keep sharing. Your experiences are valid, and even helpful/interesting to us, man :3
By the time I had put "The Goldenlea" to bed (some time before it was actually published) I was going through the throes of gender dysphoria, severe depression/anxiety, and several close calls at a nervous breakdown (including what was either a supernatural experience or a brush with insanity that left me quite literally shell-shocked). I actually hadn't produced any new material at all between the first half of 2011 and the last half of 2013 because my writer's block was so severe.
When you and I met in January 2013 (which for me was one of the highlights of the con), my ordeal was only half over. I had begun transitioning in earnest and integrating some of my difficult experiences, but I was still suffering severe writers' block and I still had a lot of disappointments and frustrations later that year that kept me unable to write again until about October of that year.
I've only recently overcome my writer's block and managed to channel the pain I've been feeling into my new work, and I feel I've emerged a stronger, more passionate, and more skilled writer from all this. My next two releases continue the meta-novel begun with "Cirrostratus" and "The Goldenlea," but take it into a hard sci-fi direction that culminates in a heartfelt homage to Philip K. Dick that I genuinely hope will be worthy of its inspiration.
I hope that you can emerge from this a stronger and more inspired writer. It doesn't require suffering to be a great writer, but it can be a tremendous asset when you learn to conquer it.
I hope you're well and I hope to see you this January at FC.
I've always thought about publishing my stories, but never got the guts to. And yet you have. At least you can say that. My writings will probably forever remain as they are. Tucked away in a small corner on a site called Furaffinity.
Also, I was and am truly happy to see how energized and uplifted you've been by the publication of Avatar Tuner. It seems like it was the shot in the arm you needed for both careers.
Happy to see you back. Just take things slow and don't put too much pressure on yourself at first.
In better news, I do think I'm going to move forward and get back to working on the next book in that series after all. And hopefully this time it won't cause me so much existential angst and self-doubt. :)
I restrained myself from mentioning the sequel in my first comment because I did not want to dump that stress on you right after your return to writing, but if you're up for it then you have my support 100%.
Some comments I've heard on Summerhill have been that it feels like part of a larger work or that it clearly was meant to be part one of something. Sure, there are unanswered questions. The great thing is, all those criticisms are appeased when you continue the story. You can't rewrite book one again, but you still have a great opportunity to do everything you want with this story.
Most people want to read more and at the end of the day, that's a great compliment to you.
But we're all better off cuz you returned.
Actually, ugh, I don't know if I want a beer literally right after I've had a cup of coffee. Cancel that. Beer later.
Anyways, hope you're feeling better!
People don't look very hard. It's literally a post in this blog.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is while I always respected you regardless of what you did - really good people make the mistake you did all the time - your statement above, owning up to what happened and taking responsibility for it in such a complete way raises my level of respect even more.
I'm so happy you're bouncing back, knew you would but it's nice to see. Can't wait to see where you go next ^^
It wasn't until I was actually in the middle of doing my community service several months after the arrest that I finally accepted that, no, this really was just my fault and I had to own up to it, and once that dawned on me I was finally able to move on, emotionally, from what had happened.
For what it's worth, you're one of those people I would never mind asking me about stuff.
You're an amazing person and this whole thing makes you no less of same. Learning experience is what it is. Or wake up call. However you want to take it :)
*hugs* from the leopard that's also a deer-tiger
I guess that also factored into things, because it was a huge disappointment to have to miss that, but the real issue, as I think the post already hopefully says, was just my overall mindset.
I am still sorry that had to happen, but if my interactions with you (and deerkat) are any indication, it doesn't look like there's any hard feelings over it, so I'm glad for that. :)
Just glad things are at least a little bit better :)
Good look to you and if you ever create that sequel to Summerhill you're teasing, you can be guaranteed another sale, and not just for the cute otter. Not that it doesn't help.
I do hope sometime in the near future we can meet up again and discuss Hanzi/Kanji nerdisms over drinks. In the meantime, I better get back and rediscover what made me enter this fuzzy famdom in the first place: Incredibly creative expressions of art. And porn. Artistic and well written porn. Lots of it.
But like you reading through the Avatar Tuner books, it was reading other stuff that inspired me and continues to inspire me. And sometimes I'll hit a slump and kind of forget that and think I don't have time to sit down and read. Reading Summerhill, in fact, actually inspired me to take a shot at a short story series or something in a similar setting, though it just wound up not quite working out.
So I'm not writing like I used to, but I've had enough good moments (getting some RPG freelancing under my belt is helping) that I'm able to push through the bad. And sometimes, just sometimes, that's enough.
I'm not really one for telling someone to do something that they don't like, but for the past little while I was sad that you never seemed to see the merit of your own writing skills, and that the self-doubt applied to much more than just your own writing. Improving is one thing, acknowledging the skills that you have is another.
Long story short, I'm glad that you found something to jump start your passions. It's good to have you back. Hope to see you at RF, if you're planning on going.
Seeya at FC? :)