Re-establishing a presence

Oddly enough, the work that’s been getting the most of my attention lately has not been the fantasy I’ve been writing on forever.

I started a science fiction story a week or so ago and ended up sending what I had to my best friend, Colin, to read. I’m pretty sure it was the first piece of mine that I’ve ever let Colin read, but I loved what I’d written so much that I was confident he’d like it too. And he did.

What’s strange is that the story is so easy. I mean…not simple, but easy to write. I know exactly what the characters are going to do and I already have the basics of their personalities down, even though I’ve not written character profiles for any of them. I already know which one is going to go bad, which one is the leader, who’s going to have the worst struggles, and who is going to be the savior. It’s bloody brilliant, though the story has taken on a decidely grim, bloody nature. It feels right and I love it.

So yeah. That was an interesting turn of events that was fanned to a flame by recent writing related experiences.

It’s work. I have to remember that. This isn’t just something I want to do on the side. I want to be sucessful at it. I want to be published. But I can’t think about it as a hobby any more, which I have been doing since forever. It’s work. It’s not fun. If I continue thinking it’s supposed to be fun, I’ll always quit when I hit a snag or get frustrated. No more of that.

I’ve been going through the processes of re-establishing all the presences I used to have online from when I was gung ho about being a writer. I’ve signed up a twitter account, a tumblr, and I’ve reactivated my account on writing.com. The one thing that really resonated with me from the panels I attended last weekend was this little piece of advice: Don’t use your friends and family for critique. They aren’t impartial. They want you to do well and so their opinions on your work will always be biased. Join writing groups and get feedback from people who don’t have an interest in what you’re writing.

So I’m going to try to do that, regardless of how scared out of my mind it makes me to have strangers picking apart my work.

In a way it’s exciting. I’m looking at it from a different point of view, which sort of makes the whole experience of writing different. It’s not how I would like to look at it, but I know it’s necessary.

In other news, there isn’t really much going on aside from having just finished up with ComicCon (see previous entry). I’ve started thinking about what I want to go as next year. I’m determined to dress up and I’m determined to do it as epically as possible. This in turn also got me thinking about what I want to be for Halloween. I have no idea. Maybe a werewolf. A werewolf would be fun. There was a cute costume I saw last year that reminded me of that sort of teen wolf look. I really liked that.

But we’ll see. My roommate likes to have us all do themes so I’ll talk to her before making any decisions.

My mom said that she would be trying to come down for a visit in the beginning of August. She said the same thing about July, so we’ll see how that goes. It would be nice to see her and my little sister though. I hope she follows through this time.

One more month and then I’ll be out of the house. It’s sad, but I’m excited.

I think that’s all for now.