TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #82

The observant among you, my readers, might have noticed a disturbing trend where I discover something, or make some proclamation, only to go back on it in the next blog and say I was wrong all along. This entry is going to be like a double reverse of that trend.

Despite my early convictions that I needed to shift my focus away from writing and onto other things, I did what characters often do in the middle of a story: accept only enough of the truth to put everything back the way it was.

I kind of dialed down my writing, and I kind of explored some other paths, but I kept my focus on fan fiction, and the stories I could tell. And, just like in those above-mentioned stories, this didn't work. Things needed to change; they couldn't go back to the way they were.

I've finally confronted (again) my disillusions in this department. I am not currently supposed to be writing. There are other...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #81

In case it hasn't been obvious over the last few entries, I feel closer now to restarting my writing than I ever have. The confusion which was present at the beginning of this writing drought has been replaced with clarity. I've knocked out obstacles to better stories one by one, and I've learned some really important concepts which I previously had not known (like character arcs and the 3-act structure). The pieces of what I need to restart my writing are steadily falling into place.

There aren't many pieces left to go. Over the course of a few days, one of the last pieces has fallen into place, explaining - if not exactly eliminating - one of the biggest problems I've been facing with my writing.

I've detailed elsewhere how, until Red, I never had 'failed stories'. They simply didn't occur. The closest thing was a truly awful attempt at a comedic story, but even that made it to the forums (I deleted...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #80

Ever since my writing stopped, I've known something which I've never mentioned here. I didn't mention it, because despite all my various proclamations that I was 'back' or I had 'fixed' X, Y, or Z, it was evidence that I was wrong. And I kind of knew that in the back of my mind, but kept talking myself out of it.

So what is that thing which I never mentioned until now? A simple fact: I knew that my writing could never return until I figured out two things. Firstly, why it had stopped, and secondly, how to bring it back. If I didn't know that, nothing would be different. My writing was stopped for a reason; I knew it wouldn't come back until something big had changed.

You already know where I'm going with this.

Throughout all of my various head-banging and wild attempts to figure out where it had all gone wrong, things were happening in the background; things which needed to happen....

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #79

This FFC will be a bit different from my others, because it concerns a scene I've seen repeated in my home on occasion. And, being the writer I am, I feel compelled to critique it.

Last night, a friend of mine - who considers himself to be a movie connoisseur - elected to watch Blade Runner (1982). We had all watched it together the first time he wanted to see it, and, remembering enough of it from that first viewing, I elected to retreat to the depths of my room, where the only sign of the viewing next door was the constant reverberations of gunfire, things crashing, and screams (seriously, I don't remember it being that violent...).

Fast forward to the next morning. My mother, who watched the film because she couldn't remember it, said that she regretted her decision to consume said visual media. She didn't know what the point of it was, described it as 'sick', and said it was one of the worst movies...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #78

It's been mid-August since my last blog entry, and late June since my last real update, leading the more avid of my followers to perhaps wonder what has become of me and my writing. More likely my fiction endeavors have simply been forgotten, but I'm going to update you anyway.

Ever since I 'stopped' writing, back in July 2020, I've been waiting to say the words 'I'm back' in one of these FFCs.

Technically I did that already at least once, but as it turned out to be largely a false alarm, I'm not counting it.

Throughout the last year+, I've been trying to restart my fiction writing. I got a few stories out, namely Utgar and Valkyrie, and while the former wasn't bad, and the later definitely had some good parts to it, neither really felt like a return to my old writing ways. For the most part, I still couldn't get stories off the ground - they always had some problem, or if they didn't,...