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Not sure what to do
4 months ago
Okay, so this is going to be a bit scatterbrained (as if most of what I do isn't), but here it is: I'm not sure how to get my writing out there.
Let me start by giving some rundown of how I came to feel comfortable calling myself a writer.
Back in eighth grade, we had to do a creative writing project in English class. Naturally, I wasn't interested, as the school I went to was SERIOUSLY holding me back, coupled with the fact that, where I am… intellectually stimulating isn't what might come to one's mind. That's rural Alabama for ya, I guess. Anyway, so we had to do a creative writing project, and at the time, my mind was solely on computers and technology, mostly the older and weirder stuff that I could get my hands on, mostly thanks to my uncle, who was living in New York State at the time, so I decided to grin and bear it. While the project was a multi-day affair, class-wise, it gave me the chance to play around with some new office suites for Windows (I hadn't really delved into the Wonderful World of Linux just yet, so Free and Open Source was still just Crappy Knockoff to me… damn, have I learned!). Not being able to use Google Docs on my computer (at the time, I swapped between a Gateway Solo 3450 and iBook G4 Laptop, this was 2013), I screwed around with a version of OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2000 (both on Windows 98 SE) and played around with AppleWorks, an old version of iWork (which I quickly stopped using), and Microsoft Office X for Mac. I know none of those are FOSS, but I was still learning and looking around. Anyway, I used the different suites to come up with a short draft, mostly to play around with them, before settling on Microsoft Office on the iBook, mostly because the iBook was the only thing I had with a battery that WORKED and Office X for Mac was both familiar enough that I was able to navigate through it, but also new enough to me that I could keep exploring. What I ended up doing was, in usual me fashion, going overboard. Needless to say, I had pictures to go along with it as I read to the class (and to some observers from the Board of Education… they're probably still wondering about me, but I digress) and felt completely IN my element.
That was when the spark was ignited.
Over the next few years, I kept writing, mostly keeping myself focused in a fictional world that was… twentyish… years behind what reality was (it was 2013, my headspace was when Windows 95 came out and the DOS prompt was still a familiar sight). I went in and out of a few fandoms, writing my own fanfics, even tried to be a part of the brony fandom after a friend managed to get me to watch a few episodes of My Little Pony, as well as started on a script for a Steven Universe episode that I wanted to send to Rebecca Sugar, but that never panned out. To me, writing quickly became everything. I couldn't move from my parents' house (and still can't), so writing and Minecraft was how I kept myself from going crazy. The internet was my home, fiction was how I made it what I wanted. Vampires, beastmen/furries, anime, the list goes on. I was your standard shut-in nerd, plus a few extra languages in the back, for years, slowly getting blocked by more and more mental fog.
Eventually going through two jobs (first was a two-month stint at a piece of shit's graphics shop, where everyone made me realize just how worthless I am because I'm autistic and a genius, yet expected me to do better than everyone there, second was McDonald's, where the experience was a few notches up, but the raise to minimum wage wasn't enough to justify the headache) and landing on my third job, thanks to a family friend (a couple, actually), my now-current manager saw me as a person who'd been through hell. First, I was in the back doing assembly for a few weeks, then just a regular stock person on the floor. One day, she tells me that she wants me to be the main sales person on the floor. I didn't know it at the time, but she wanted to help me gain some confidence. She knew I was amazing with technology, but could stand to grow in my interpersonal skills. Her plan was to give me the mobile POS and have me be the sales leader on the floor. I was, naturally, skeptical, but after a few times of checking people out and explaining to them the options that we had on the shelf, it became clear to me: I was just telling people facts and, occasionally, having a quick chat about life or solutions to problems. Early on in this position, my father came to get something from our store, and my manager explained what my position was to him. He said that I couldn't do that kind of thing, to which she printed out a comments page where, evidently, several people had listed me by name with nothing but positive things to say, both proving him wrong and reaffirming her hypothesis about my lack of confidence. I never disappoint, or so I'm told (lately I'm becoming less skeptical about that), in that position.
How does that relate to my writing? I came out to my manager when I was going to publish my first ebook, and again for my second, which she saw as real accomplishments.
I've been working on my writing, my characters, my sonas, but nothing seems to be going right anymore. After losing my third (and last) grandfather to a years-long battle with ALS on the day after Thanksgiving 2024, everything just stopped. I couldn't write, I couldn't focus, I couldn't sit down to my piano and play music, hell, I couldn't even do anything on a computer.
His death really shook me off-balance.
My boyfriend, after talking about Grandeddy to him a few times, wanted to come down for the memorial next week, so I bought the train tickets to and from me, giving a week due to my wanting to spend some time with him and also not being good at planning trips (to be completely honest). He fits into this story by being the first person I came out to, non-anonymously, about being interested in gaining and fats, as well as showed him some of my self-indulgent fatfur and WG stories (mostly just me imagining stuff and typing it onto an external SSD). He also liked my writing (both regular and kinky, bedroom-only shit) and suggested I do commissions on the side. This was well-before Grandeddy passed. I wasn't sure about it because, by this point, my mind was just fuzzy, leaving me to simply go through the motions every day.
Anyway, to finish it all off, here I am. I don't know what to do, because the only stories I've been able to clearly think of were my two Gwenn stories, but she's just my fat unicorn. I don't know if I should try to go back to what I had proofed before Grandeddy passed, or if I should just drop that completely, start over from scratch, and do my best to write things that people would be proud to keep in the bottom of their sock drawers. Right now, it's just a feeling of emptiness and nothingness, writing is. I'm not sure if I'm looking for recognition or if I'm dealing with something more substantial. The fog had set in long before I even started thinking about Grandeddy's mortality, so I don't think that's related, but I could be wrong.
Put simply, I just don't know what to do right now.
Let me start by giving some rundown of how I came to feel comfortable calling myself a writer.
Back in eighth grade, we had to do a creative writing project in English class. Naturally, I wasn't interested, as the school I went to was SERIOUSLY holding me back, coupled with the fact that, where I am… intellectually stimulating isn't what might come to one's mind. That's rural Alabama for ya, I guess. Anyway, so we had to do a creative writing project, and at the time, my mind was solely on computers and technology, mostly the older and weirder stuff that I could get my hands on, mostly thanks to my uncle, who was living in New York State at the time, so I decided to grin and bear it. While the project was a multi-day affair, class-wise, it gave me the chance to play around with some new office suites for Windows (I hadn't really delved into the Wonderful World of Linux just yet, so Free and Open Source was still just Crappy Knockoff to me… damn, have I learned!). Not being able to use Google Docs on my computer (at the time, I swapped between a Gateway Solo 3450 and iBook G4 Laptop, this was 2013), I screwed around with a version of OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2000 (both on Windows 98 SE) and played around with AppleWorks, an old version of iWork (which I quickly stopped using), and Microsoft Office X for Mac. I know none of those are FOSS, but I was still learning and looking around. Anyway, I used the different suites to come up with a short draft, mostly to play around with them, before settling on Microsoft Office on the iBook, mostly because the iBook was the only thing I had with a battery that WORKED and Office X for Mac was both familiar enough that I was able to navigate through it, but also new enough to me that I could keep exploring. What I ended up doing was, in usual me fashion, going overboard. Needless to say, I had pictures to go along with it as I read to the class (and to some observers from the Board of Education… they're probably still wondering about me, but I digress) and felt completely IN my element.
That was when the spark was ignited.
Over the next few years, I kept writing, mostly keeping myself focused in a fictional world that was… twentyish… years behind what reality was (it was 2013, my headspace was when Windows 95 came out and the DOS prompt was still a familiar sight). I went in and out of a few fandoms, writing my own fanfics, even tried to be a part of the brony fandom after a friend managed to get me to watch a few episodes of My Little Pony, as well as started on a script for a Steven Universe episode that I wanted to send to Rebecca Sugar, but that never panned out. To me, writing quickly became everything. I couldn't move from my parents' house (and still can't), so writing and Minecraft was how I kept myself from going crazy. The internet was my home, fiction was how I made it what I wanted. Vampires, beastmen/furries, anime, the list goes on. I was your standard shut-in nerd, plus a few extra languages in the back, for years, slowly getting blocked by more and more mental fog.
Eventually going through two jobs (first was a two-month stint at a piece of shit's graphics shop, where everyone made me realize just how worthless I am because I'm autistic and a genius, yet expected me to do better than everyone there, second was McDonald's, where the experience was a few notches up, but the raise to minimum wage wasn't enough to justify the headache) and landing on my third job, thanks to a family friend (a couple, actually), my now-current manager saw me as a person who'd been through hell. First, I was in the back doing assembly for a few weeks, then just a regular stock person on the floor. One day, she tells me that she wants me to be the main sales person on the floor. I didn't know it at the time, but she wanted to help me gain some confidence. She knew I was amazing with technology, but could stand to grow in my interpersonal skills. Her plan was to give me the mobile POS and have me be the sales leader on the floor. I was, naturally, skeptical, but after a few times of checking people out and explaining to them the options that we had on the shelf, it became clear to me: I was just telling people facts and, occasionally, having a quick chat about life or solutions to problems. Early on in this position, my father came to get something from our store, and my manager explained what my position was to him. He said that I couldn't do that kind of thing, to which she printed out a comments page where, evidently, several people had listed me by name with nothing but positive things to say, both proving him wrong and reaffirming her hypothesis about my lack of confidence. I never disappoint, or so I'm told (lately I'm becoming less skeptical about that), in that position.
How does that relate to my writing? I came out to my manager when I was going to publish my first ebook, and again for my second, which she saw as real accomplishments.
I've been working on my writing, my characters, my sonas, but nothing seems to be going right anymore. After losing my third (and last) grandfather to a years-long battle with ALS on the day after Thanksgiving 2024, everything just stopped. I couldn't write, I couldn't focus, I couldn't sit down to my piano and play music, hell, I couldn't even do anything on a computer.
His death really shook me off-balance.
My boyfriend, after talking about Grandeddy to him a few times, wanted to come down for the memorial next week, so I bought the train tickets to and from me, giving a week due to my wanting to spend some time with him and also not being good at planning trips (to be completely honest). He fits into this story by being the first person I came out to, non-anonymously, about being interested in gaining and fats, as well as showed him some of my self-indulgent fatfur and WG stories (mostly just me imagining stuff and typing it onto an external SSD). He also liked my writing (both regular and kinky, bedroom-only shit) and suggested I do commissions on the side. This was well-before Grandeddy passed. I wasn't sure about it because, by this point, my mind was just fuzzy, leaving me to simply go through the motions every day.
Anyway, to finish it all off, here I am. I don't know what to do, because the only stories I've been able to clearly think of were my two Gwenn stories, but she's just my fat unicorn. I don't know if I should try to go back to what I had proofed before Grandeddy passed, or if I should just drop that completely, start over from scratch, and do my best to write things that people would be proud to keep in the bottom of their sock drawers. Right now, it's just a feeling of emptiness and nothingness, writing is. I'm not sure if I'm looking for recognition or if I'm dealing with something more substantial. The fog had set in long before I even started thinking about Grandeddy's mortality, so I don't think that's related, but I could be wrong.
Put simply, I just don't know what to do right now.
Doctoreye
~doctoreye
Your not alone and if I can give you some advice, don’t push yourself to try and force out ideas you think that others would like just take a break and think about what you like and try to let the writing out slowly. Also I’d love to hear more about these fanfics ^^
