If you’re still doing the writing asks, I’d like to ask!
🌿how does creating make you feel?
I am, yes! Sorry for the slowness 😅 Thank you for the question 💖
This is going to sound so pathetic, but creating makes me feel like I'm worth something.
I've never felt like I've been great at anything (but not for lack of trying! and I do think that is the most important thing!) - I was a poor to average student (bad attention span, apparently spent too much time daydreaming about my special interests rather than focusing on things like maths and science and apparently the things that matter, according to my teachers), and all the hobbies/crafts I picked up over the years I'd start and then let go of before I could master them (I used to be really into art and drawing when I was younger, and I think I could have been good at it if I stuck it out for longer, I also used to play instruments but I never had the patience for learning them "properly", and did much better at self-teaching than being instructed).
Even when I started writing as a teenager I let my lack of focus get the better of me and I just didn't allow myself to see things through. And as I got older, I felt like I couldn't share anything I did (writing wise) with the world because it all felt a bit half done.
Then the pandemic happened.
I've always excelled at consuming. I was a film student, I watched films like it was my job (and for a while, it kind of was), listened to music like it was my job (same thing), read loads and loads of books and absolutely consumed every piece of queer lit I could get my hands on. Including fanfic.
When lockdown started I found myself with time, and with a narrowed focus. I read more fic and I got really into Wolfstar - after primarily being a Drarry reader - and decided I wanted to try writing something of my own and publishing it. I didn't expect it to go anywhere. I had the support of a best friend (who I happened to meet on Harry Potter livejournal back in the day and is now one of my closest friends) who encouraged me to keep going with it, so I did, and it gained a little traction, and the positive feedback on that encouraged me to keep going and the more I went the more joy I got out of creating and realising that - making my own stories, writing the fic I want to read, is a really joyous, fulfilling thing. And it finally allowed me to finish something and feel like yes, I achieved that, I did something exactly the way I want, I completed something on my own terms.
And the more I create, the less I feel a need to do it for anyone's approval other than my own, and that I've found is the secret to a rewarding, joyous creative output.
So, when I create, I feel purpose, within myself. I feel joy.
... sorry for the essay 😂
Anyway, if anyone else wants to hear my jumbled assortment of thoughts, go ahead! Fanfic writer ask game <3
