FFC #72 - An update, and confrontations

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #72

It's been a bit since my last update, and I haven't really been around much, so I wanted to let my readers know what's going on.

Not much has changed from my last FFC update. I still have some stories floating around, nothing is really taking off, and that's about it. This goes for my novels as well, to a lesser extent.

Over the last year, it's been becoming increasingly clear why this is happening. For the first five years of my writing, it was like I was unstoppable. My stories got better, I never had problems writing them like I do now, things just worked. My writing hasn't really felt that way since I wrote Red. I've detailed before that that's where everything seems to have fallen apart.

Over the last year or so, I've had to shift my thinking quite a bit. I've had to confront the fact that I need to get out and get a job and general experience like a normal person - something I always knew, but had basically talked myself out of believing. Now I'm faced with that fact, and find myself once again largely incapable of writing. I can't seem to focus on both. I'm either in the 'I want to write' mindset, or I'm in the 'I need to get a job' mindset. They don't work together. Which is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

So what does this mean for writing? I don't know. I've been fighting this for years, but I'll eventually have to get out there and get a job (or equivalent), and all indications are that when that happens, all writing will die.

I don't know if that's the case. That's just the only logical conclusion I see at the moment. I know people have said they write better when they're supposed to be doing other things - maybe that will happen to me. But at this point one thing is obvious: I can no longer just sit at my computer and write like I used to. It just doesn't work anymore. I have to get out there, and what happens happens. If I miraculously regain the ability to write, great. If I find it's gone forever... well that'll be a big part of who I am, dead. But I wrote while I could, and feel pleased with what I've accomplished.

If this is it, if these ten or so years are all I had to write - well, I didn't reach the level of success I wanted to, but I certainly did far more than I thought I could at the beginning.

In the end, that's what writing - and particularly writing fantasy - is all about: taking people away from reality, if even for a few minutes, to a world where what they want really can happen.

It's hard to leave that world. I didn't want to - I still don't. The hard truth of reality is that it is, in fact, reality. You've got to face it sooner or later. But the thing with fantasy - with imagination and dreams - is that they never leave either.

I'll write again, some day. Of that, I'm sure.

Until then, keep reading, keep writing, and I'll see you on the other side.

~TGRF.

P.S. My writing might be dead in the water, but I'll still be here on HSers, checking in every few days. I'm currently reading Mistobrn, and intend to do a review/critique of it here when I'm finished. So that's probably what you'll see next.