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Cy~

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I have always been interested in writing since I could read. I never had the confidence or attention span to actually pursue it though. The brief period I shined was in my grade 12 year of high school in English class. Every Friday we were given a prompt and we had an hour to take that prompt however we wanted and create an essay from it. Quite often mine were featured because I usually took the prompt in a direction no one else in the class had.

 

Anyway, I really like writing, but I have nearly no talent in it. So it's not something I actively pursue!

 

(I'd love to see lots more of everyone else's writing though!)

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My entire writing hobby could be summed up with this:

- write a first draft

- delete a first draft

- rewrite it in a year or five.

 

I was much more interested in writing fan fiction and RPGs back when I was younger, when free time was much more plentiful and I didn't have as many distractions in life. There was also a lack of barrier stopping me, that self-criticism keeping me from publishing wasn't there. I had no shame, and I was able to write anything I like without concern that it might not be good enough. Ironically, I wasn't an avid reader. I loved to write, loved to create stories, just not read other people's stories.

 

Over the years, however, getting my story to "sound right", to do proper justice to the story I want, just seemed much more harder. After being exposed to other people's stories, it became ironically harder for me to write instead of the opposite, because it showed me what real writing looks like, and what a good story looks like. I kept rewriting because I didn't sound like a real writer. My works made me look like an amateur fan fiction writer, something that's probably more frowned upon today than an anime fan. "Fan fiction" is an interchangeable term among most people with "bad writing", even if the truth isn't so. With works like Twilight and 50 Shades exposing themselves to the public eye, the stigma is stronger than ever, but that's another topic in itself.

 

Anyway, I don't want to make it sound like I'm writing for the sake of getting attention. That's not the entire reason, even if it's part of it. What ultimately keeps me from completing a work has more to do with my self-esteem than what people might have said about my works (which is very little anyway, since I rarely had the chance for reviews or even readers). Since about a decade ago, I only ever have one work, much like how Tolkien only had Lord of the Rings on his mind. It's a crossover with some of my favorite anime characters, and over the years, I built it up into something bigger with every passing year, until it became an impractical story to write, or at least write well.

 

It was supposed to tackle addiction to pornography, and being a lover of deconstruction stories myself, I wanted to deconstruct several tropes through the story as well, including the "loser turned hero" trope, where a loser character magically turns into a likable person with the aid of convenient side characters. I wanted to write a completely unlikable character and make him stay that way, to make a statement that life doesn't work that way. It was an idea born out of bitterness and cynicism, I'll admit. The whole concept was created in my youth as an attempt to spite people by putting their favorite characters (whom I loathe) through some despicable fates. After years of fine-tuning, however, it became more recognizable as a proper story idea people might be interested in, but it retained that same cynical tone, and I think it will do so for years to come. I don't want to write a happy story. I don't want to write some silly romantic.

 

But I think it's a moot point to talk about what I want to write when I haven't even finished first draft. I don't know when I'll ever have the motivation to keep writing in spite of what it might look like. I kept rewriting the same first chapter. I tried a self-help book that deals with the fear of writing, but that didn't help much, even though I personally talked to the author herself via email. I just hope that someday, I might have the free time to force myself to write again, whether I like it or not. I think the only way I could do that is by not caring about what my readers think. Unfortunately, that is supposedly the wrong way to write, and a good story is supposedly one where the audience is kept in mind. Oh well.

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@Orius, the story you're creating sounds like it'd be very enjoyable. I always love it when writers challenge the common stereotypes and tropes, it usually results in something quite interesting!

And, I gotta say, I'd love to see a story written where the author ignores the audience and just writes for the sake of creating a story.

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@Orius, the story you're creating sounds like it'd be very enjoyable. I always love it when writers challenge the common stereotypes and tropes, it usually results in something quite interesting!

And, I gotta say, I'd love to see a story written where the author ignores the audience and just writes for the sake of creating a story.

Yeah, I've never been a fan of rehashing the same story in the same generic way. I'm afraid I tend to use "generic" and cliched" a lot in my criticisms of movies and stories, when that in itself, ironically, makes my criticisms generic and repetitive, like I'm beating a dead horse.

 

But over the years, as I've became exposed to more stories, I started to realize that being creative is hard, and it's becoming harder with everyone borrowing each other's ideas. So nowadays, I feel it's unfair to just say a story is generic, because I feel it's an inevitable tipping point all writers and artists will reach someday. There will be a limit to novelty.

 

Challenging stereotypes is rather easy anyway. Subverting a trope is one simple way to challenge a stereotype, for example. It's how you challenge it that makes all the difference, by showing people a perspective they've never seen before in a meaningful way. For example, Attack on Titan tried to show the reality of death in a shounen anime, to show how brutal it can be, and that a tragic backstory isn't just some heroic exposition to make the main character look cooler. It's something truly traumatic. Unfortunately, I feel that, halfway through the first season, they were kinda reduced to heroic shounen archetypes, contradicting its original point in the first place. So there is it, challenging a trope alone isn't enough. You need to stick with it as a principle, to mold the deconstruction into part of the story theme itself. That is a lot easier for me to say than it is for someone to do. lol

 

Anyway, it's nice to know that there are people out there still interested in this kind of stories. Because of how controversial some of the themes are (since it deals with pornography), there are a lot of roadblocks keeping me from succeeding. But at least this can serve as a spark of motivation for the future. :)

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Yeah, I've never been a fan of rehashing the same story in the same generic way. I'm afraid I tend to use "generic" and cliched" a lot in my criticisms of movies and stories, when that in itself, ironically, makes my criticisms generic and repetitive, like I'm beating a dead horse.

 

But over the years, as I've became exposed to more stories, I started to realize that being creative is hard, and it's becoming harder with everyone borrowing each other's ideas. So nowadays, I feel it's unfair to just say a story is generic, because I feel it's an inevitable tipping point all writers and artists will reach someday. There will be a limit to novelty.

 

Challenging stereotypes is rather easy anyway. Subverting a trope is one simple way to challenge a stereotype, for example. It's how you challenge it that makes all the difference, by showing people a perspective they've never seen before in a meaningful way. For example, Attack on Titan tried to show the reality of death in a shounen anime, to show how brutal it can be, and that a tragic backstory isn't just some heroic exposition to make the main character look cooler. It's something truly traumatic. Unfortunately, I feel that, halfway through the first season, they were kinda reduced to heroic shounen archetypes, contradicting its original point in the first place. So there is it, challenging a trope alone isn't enough. You need to stick with it as a principle, to mold the deconstruction into part of the story theme itself. That is a lot easier for me to say than it is for someone to do. lol

 

Anyway, it's nice to know that there are people out there still interested in this kind of stories. Because of how controversial some of the themes are (since it deals with pornography), there are a lot of roadblocks keeping me from succeeding. But at least this can serve as a spark of motivation for the future. :)

Roadblocks or not (self-inflicted or otherwise), I'm glad to hear that you're at least still trying. There are many people that would give up at the slightest inconvenience or difficulty (myself being an example of that). I have a lot of appreciation for writers (and creators in general) because they do face big challenges, quite often challenges created by their own demons, and it's really cool to see someone overcome that.

Of course, there are some things written I wish never saw the light of day. The travesties of Twilight and 50 Shades being a great example of that. I actually read both of them to give them a benefit of a doubt (and also so I can openly dislike them without people saying I should actually read them first, because I have read them). I suppose I can sort of see the charm of those series for a teenage girl, but I can't even fathom why a grown woman could possibly get so obsessed with it. Each to their own, I suppose!

 

Am I getting way off-topic? I feel like I'm getting way off-topic.

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I have been writing a book on watpad.

 

http://my.w.tt/UiNb/jVo7vuKrKD

Ohh I had almost forgotten about Wattpad! I used to read things on there all the time. I always liked how well it worked on a mobile device, which is what I like to read on when it comes to digital items.

Perhaps I shall take the dive back into Wattpad to give your story a read ^-^

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Actually, for writers out there who might be interested, there was a new writing platform created a few years ago called Penana. I suppose it's very much like Wattpad and Archives of Our Own, except that there's a function to save your writing/chapters as drafts, and even allow the public to edit those drafts as they see fit if you allow them to become co-writers.

 

The hardest part about this is getting people interested in your story enough for them to become co-writers in the first place. I never managed to use this very useful function because I never got to publish anything, but others who write and publish online often might find this site more useful than me. There's also a 'forum' of sorts attached to the site where you could seek out co-writers to help you with, and also a social function where you could update your status and follow other members.

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Ohh I had almost forgotten about Wattpad! I used to read things on there all the time. I always liked how well it worked on a mobile device, which is what I like to read on when it comes to digital items.

Perhaps I shall take the dive back into Wattpad to give your story a read ^-^

Please let me know if you do. I gave up writing it cause no one was interested

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I once nearly finished writing a book in it's first draft. I was about 176 pages into it when I thought it would be about 235. It had kind of based off of Ruroni Kenshin in it's setting, but I had all original characters and plot points for it. There was even a part that I had worked on for a very long time where the main character had to sneak into a fortress to save one of his friends and it was nearly 20 pages of the whole story. It was detailed, made sense, I had edited it several times because each time I went to work on it, I made some changes, I spent over 1000 hours on that book. This was well before cloud saves though and even though I'd backed it up on an external drive, it somehow got deleted off the drive and my computer, and I couldn't restore it on either of them either. The only thing that survived of that story was a character I had made named Riku, with no association to anything Square related who ended up in my next attempt at a story I made.

 

That story was kind of based off of Bleach, where creatures existed who had taken the forms and powers of Gods from many religions and mythologies, and only those who were trained to fight each monster from reach mythology could harm them, save for the one group Riku was from who fight all of them, but were too few to do it on their own, hence the groups who specialized in fighting them. For no particular reason, I had decided the group that could fight them all fought against Angel's and Jesus like monsters from the Christian faith. The reason it was like Bleach was because the characters mostly used blades, and even they could be imbued by Spirits to "Power Up" into different forms. They also had more than one form. Riku had two blades, which is my preferred fighting style because of JRPG's I've played. In their first form, the right blade inflicted hot burns and the left icy chills that could freeze opponents. The second form would see the Ice and Fire Powers increased but the souls that inhabited them were jealous of one another and would fight to be used, meaning they would switch which blades they possessed in an attempt to get used more. The third form saw them behaving better and increasing their attack output making if possible for Riku to move faster as the force of the flames would increase his speed or to slide quickly across roads of ice. That one as well, despite being backed up, was also somehow deleted.

 

Finally, I started working on a comicbook, although without art because I can't draw where the main hero was treated like a villain because his powers basically were seen as horrifying to those who witnessed them, and often would lead to them losing their minds. His power was basically to enchant any item he wanted and imbue it with the power to fight for him, but whatever he used became horribly misshapen when started using it. He was also mutated so he had a frightful appearance. He lacked the ability to really control his powers fully which led to people around him losing their minds. Opposing him were a family of four, who seen as heroes largely because they could create resources such as steel or trees out of nothing. They were known as the stonewalls because they had once stopped a flash flood from drowning four different towns at once with walls made of stone. I had a few others with powers such as one who could not only read minds, but change the thoughts in them, and another who was actually evil who read the powers of another upon contact and borrow them for a day. That one, I ran out of ideas for really quickly, and haven't wrote a thing for it in years.

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I like writing :P

 

I mean, I'm currently working on MMaM (Me-Myself-and-the-Multiverse) which is a series about the every-day lives of almost immortals exploring the multiverse.

 

But allot of the facts and whatnot are scattered around AF's creative corner, so I shouldn't really go into too much detail.

 

Still, writing is something I never want to give up, since I want to make MMaM a popular web-series. All I currently need to do is figure out how to buy a domain name and all the technical stuff's.

 

^w^

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I like writing :P

 

I mean, I'm currently working on MMaM (Me-Myself-and-the-Multiverse) which is a series about the every-day lives of almost immortals exploring the multiverse.

 

But allot of the facts and whatnot are scattered around AF's creative corner, so I shouldn't really go into too much detail.

 

Still, writing is something I never want to give up, since I want to make MMaM a popular web-series. All I currently need to do is figure out how to buy a domain name and all the technical stuff's.

 

^w^

Xyro?

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I started reading at a very young age, and it was one of the few things I actually did in my childhood ... I never met people or interacted with actual humans so I was never sure if I could really write anything with realistic characters and conversations, since I myself have no idea how they worked.

I did begin writing poetry around 10 years old though after my Dad introduced me to it, it's something I find quiet whimsical when others write it but just down right depressing and dark when I do so ... I'm not sure if anyone would actually ever enjoy reading the poems I write.

 

Besides being afraid that I can't portray characters realistically, I also struggle with actually finding the will power to write a book even though it's something I've wanted to do for years ... I always end up writing out all the character profiles, backstories, and part in the book, but then just shove that aside and forget about it because I'm not actually good at writing the book after the details are set.

I think it's due to the fact that I'm super self-conscious and just hate everything I've ever written, so I try not to write something new just to hate it and myself even more.

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My romance with writing has been a long, yet recently reinvigorate one.

 

During my time in primary school, I had started keeping a diary. Inconsistently updated, but a diary nonetheless. I wrote songs too. They were often alternative lyrics to songs I heard on the radio. These were my little side projects. In school, I consistently scored amongst the top for English in my class. I always came either first or second, but I absolutely wanted to be number one. And that is probably what fueled my attitude towards self-improvement in my English.

 

So there's that. I used to like writing, purely because I though of it as a good way to attain good grades and then boast to my childhood peers xD But as time went on, it started to get boring, repetitive and tiring. Because gone were my little passionate side-projects, rather, I spent all my writing time on assignments and write-ups. Our relationship weakened.

 

But recently, my interest in writing has picked up; which is entirely due to anime. A quote that I often love to use to describe my attitude towards anime is: "I love watching anime, but what I love more than that - is talking about it." Talking - to be specific refers to discussion, leaning more towards the in-depth side, rather than casual conversations. Due to this need, and the fact that I don't have much people to talk to IRL about anime; I started writing.

 

At first, I wrote long posts for online forums but then quickly realized that I wanted to do this as a full-fledged hobby and have it be easily accessible to others. That is the reason I created my blog, and joined more discussion-based forums like this one, I still like to write long posts (idk whether people read them, but whatever, I like writing :P). But now, more often than not, I am seeking to improve myself with every single post. Rather than just posting for the sake of doing so (which is totally fine).

 

I do have a lot of writing projects planned for the future. One of them includes a collaboration with another writer I met online, which will be held of a date that's undecided yet. The latter, and more exciting one of the two involves me re-watching, and writing about all of my favorite (14) anime this summer. The aim for me doing this is to help me have a record of what I love about those series at this moment in time in order for me to finalize my top 10 favorite anime list. More importantly, I aim to convey what I love about those series to others and experiment with my writing style in each and every piece I write. I also want to improve a lot of my basic skills such as different sentence structures, appropriate punctuation etc. So in many ways, it would be a fun and educational summer :D

 

Even after that, I intend to continue with the writing collaborations and constantly update my blog.

 

I don't see my escalating relationship with writing slowing down anytime soon.

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I mean, if anyone is interested, you can read what I have at the moment at:

 

https://projectforxyro.wixsite.com/me-myself-multiverse

 

Please don't judge the webpage design xD I need to learn what to do for it and how to make it presentable.

 

Storywise, as I said, I'm only on season 2, (only season 1 is on that weblink) and I intend on at least making 10-15 seasons.

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I mean, if anyone is interested, you can read what I have at the moment at:

 

https://projectforxyro.wixsite.com/me-myself-multiverse

 

Please don't judge the webpage design xD I need to learn what to do for it and how to make it presentable.

 

Storywise, as I said, I'm only on season 2, (only season 1 is on that weblink) and I intend on at least making 10-15 seasons.

Ack! Still criticising my web design!

 

*Looks at page*

 

Oh. You changed it.

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I have written quite a few stories in the past, and after sharing one with my sister, she thought that I should write books for a career, and I have written a total of five, which are listed at the link below:

 

http://brycecampbell.me/books.html

 

I am not proud of all of those books, but people have liked them.

 

During my time writing, I also setup a blog, whose link could be easily found in the community, and people really seem to like it because my writing is entertaining, and my perspective on things seem to be unique, though that could be because I know things now that my elders never realized at my age, and I have been reviewing books, manga, and anime for a few years, though I have been covering more books and manga recently.

 

When I write, I feel much more free than I do in a church or a 9 to 5 type job, even though it does take a lot of time out of my life.

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Since I've written some really lengthy posts in the forums, it's got me thinking how most of the time, I'm just winging it. There's no real thought process behind my writing, and this has got me concerned sometimes whether if I sounded as eloquent as I wanted to, or rather, needed to (like when I was defending Sayaka lol).

 

It's the same with narrative writing, and probably a bigger problem there as opposed to normal writing. When writing a story especially, writing itself would seem to me like some kind of mystical art that I need to unlock. It can seem so daunting sometimes, like how do I find the correct words to sound convincing?

 

If you've paid attention to my posts, you'll notice that my vocabulary can be quite limited. Here are the words I'd remember often using: depressing, rather, kinda, probably, awesome, epic, generic, and mediocre. I try to be creative with my words as much as I can (especially seeing how well Cy~ can write), but it's like I can only write with so much variety, and that there's a wall blocking me from writing better.

 

Part of this is due to my own self-esteem issues, but I feel that's a very small part of the problem. A bigger part would probably have to do with my own laziness in editing my posts. I'd almost never edit my posts before submitting them, whether out of impatience or just negligence. Therefore, I would often not realize how to make my posts sound better till after the post is submitted, and most probably read.

Edited by Guest
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I'm currently researching and studying a few things for a book I desperately want to write, instead of leaving the idea to die in the massive folder of character, plot, and story lines I had ...

So far I'm still working on the plot for this particular project and I've got a few to pick from, I'm unsure as of yet but I'm still hoping this one won't be tucked away somewhere I'll just forget it.

 

My 2 main characters are almost done seeing as I always write out their appearance, personality, bio, and such things before I even begin putting the story together ...

I have started projects before and completely scrapped them due to the fact that I hate every word I write, but I'm really hoping this one will turn out differently since I'm really delving deep into this one and putting time into researching the facts that will be used.

 

So far the plot revolves around a (Somewhat) rebellious girl who ends up being the one thing she didn't want to be, and a King who lost his whole kingdom.

I'm planning on having it set in a re-imagined 13th century type world where everything is still run by Kings and Queens, seeing as it's re-imagined there will be a few things to keep it interesting and somewhat surprising as well.

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  • 4 months later...
On 6/6/2017 at 8:07 AM, Nutty said:

I wanted to do this as a full-fledged hobby and have it be easily accessible to others

I can relate to this. The reason why I do creative things in general is in the hope that somehow they can be shared with others and be of value. I also write purely for the sake of self-expression, but I do feel that quality and longevity is important for creative works.

For myself I got into writing initially by keeping a journal I read a number of journals of important historical figures while I was in primary school, and I decided that if I too wanted to be important than I should obviously keep a steady journal as well. Did that over the years, sometimes consistently ( every day ) and sometimes not ( twice a month ). At this point the contents of the collected journal entries are over 400k words. The quality is very random. At one point I had the entire contents posted online publicly, but my family found out about it and got angry and forced me to take it down.

More recently I have begun writing a science-fiction novel. I wrote quite a bit in the first month or so of working on it in my spare time. It is about a third the length of a full standard novel at this point. I shared it to some friends and family. Some people said it was really wonderful; others were less appreciative. I also went online and tried to find places and people that would be interested in reading it; sent 6 or 7 emails out but never got any responses. In the end I just kind of stopped working on it because I started to lose confidence in getting useful feedback on it. I do still hope to finish the novel, but it is frustrating to work so hard on something and have people not even have the time to read the first chapter of it, or even the first 5 paragraphs.

Generally that is the theme of my life. I spend a tremendous amount of time and effort doing something creative, reach about 50% through accomplishing whatever it is, then I drop the project entirely and move on with my life leaving a half completed corpse of a project. The half completed projects are interesting and valuable in their own right, but I see no point in completing projects that will never "see the light of day."

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