Creative Writing

After spending 3 months and over 15,000 words pondering how 2 writers I greatly admire reflect upon what it means to be an artist in their collective works, I began to think about myself as an artist. For a while I considered myself a scholar, not an artist, but I soon realized how limiting this view was. The two are in no way mutually exclusive; I know several scholars who are also great writers in their own right and many writers who are also talented literary critics.

So what about myself? As I have pointed out before, I think the fact that I write this blog as a hobby should make it clear that I very much enjoy writing (I don’t just do it so I have something besides selfies to post on my social media) and it has always been a dream of mine to one day complete and publish a novel of my own. From a young age I not only enjoyed reading but writing my own stories once I had finished the available novels in whatever series I was reading at the time, you could call these very early attempts at fan fiction. Soon I moved from this to making up my own stories and characters. I have also always loved drawing; some of my fondest memories from childhood are of sitting in my grandmother’s front room with a box of rainbow-coloured pens and a stack of printer paper writing and drawing my own comic books. I credit having this hobby as what lead me to become particular good at English in school, though few of the texts we studied featured aliens or superheroes.

In university I met many talented young writers and began writing reviews and journalistic pieces for student media. This was my first taste of having something I had written out in the world for people to read (something I had been shy about initially). I continued to work on creative projects and experiment with different styles, it was also during this time when I was submitting pieces to various publications that I learned the important lesson that is rejection. Not every work will be published, there is always work to be done or improvements to be made and count every success and rejection alike as a learning experience. It became apparent to me that I was no poet and couldn’t really write short stories as they inevitably ended up reading like the opening chapter of a novel. Novels and longer running narrative media like comic books had been what first ignited the passion for storytelling within me and they have become not only my main academic interest but my own preferred form of creative writing. I like to world-build, create characters and flesh out their backstories. This and my love for the genres of fantasy and science fiction is also what drew me to playing Role Playing Games during college. I could write an entire blog post on my passion for Dungeons and Dragons (which I may do in the near future). The potential for limitless creativity and the opportunity to combine my passion for writing long-form stories with my talent for improvisation makes it an extremely fulfilling pastime, one that so many people have discovered in recent years.

But how does this all connect to my desire to write a novel? Basically it has been, for lack of a better description, a side project I have been working on for almost 3 years now. Draft after draft and countless rewrites and I have yet to complete even half of the book. I have the ideas in my head and a rough plan laid out but I could just never find the time. I feel this is mostly because for the past 4 years the majority of my time has been spent either reading, researching or writing and even someone as passionate about literature as I am doesn’t want to spend the entirety of their time focusing on it. I also have my other hobbies and projects, therefore finishing the novel became this great goal I would get to “eventually” or “when I find the time”. Now that I have finished my MA and am seeking employment, I realise I will not only have more time for leisure reading but also to pursue such goals that had been hitherto pushed aside as my education took priority. After completing a 15,000 word thesis the prospect of writing an entire original novel does not seem like such a lofty goal for me anymore. As I mentioned in my previous post, the disciplines of editing, drafting and setting daily word targets that I acquired during the thesis writing process are very transferrable to a creative project. So that is the mission that I am assigning myself; to keep writing and hold on to these creative outlets that will allow me to link my free-time to my true passion in life and who knows, with discipline and creativity I may be able to complete that novel I have been talking about for so long. They say that everyone has at least one in them.