“A word after a word after a word is power.” –Margaret Atwood
I’ve already written about my love of reading, but I want to go into more detail about my love of writing and why I write. Looking back, it was only a matter of time that my love of reading turned me towards a life of writing. Of course, like always, it started with horribly crafted ideas that were thinly veiled self-insert stories. And then over the years, the ideas become less cringey and more sophisticated.
The goal from day one has always been to become a published author. I want to inspire people, since I myself have been inspired by my favorite writers. Since 2013 I have been attending book fairs and book signings of my favorite authors. Due to these book fairs, I now have a small group of authors that have become friends.
Also, as someone with a bit of an ego, I want my words to be immortalized. We still have works from old philosophers that we still read. As a writer, you can never die because your words can live forever. And I think that’s powerful.
At the current writing of this blog post, I have two novel-length projects in the works. The first one is a YA fantasy novel surrounding a Scandinavian queen and an Arab messenger. This project focuses on religion, spirituality, and sense of self. It’s a heavier and more serious book than some of my other projects and ideas. Currently I am stuck on the world- and character-building part of the writing process. I don’t really even have a plot. All I have is a soundtrack that I absolutely adore: Queen of Thorns by Adrian von Ziegler. Whenever I listen to it, I envision a newly crowned queen who is putting on a brave face for her people but inside she is terrified.
My second project that is more concrete is titled All the World’s a Stage. I thought of this idea my senior year of high school when I started falling in love with Shakespeare’s plays. Finally, I decided to take four of his tragedies—Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth—and modernized them, weaving their stories together. Whenever I tell people about this project, I always say, “it’s when Shakespeare meets The Godfather in Las Vegas.” Underground crime? Hell yes. This project excites me so much. I can’t wait for the semester to end so I can start working on it again.
During the summer of 2019, I wrote a (very) bare bones outline that consisted of 80 chapters, plus an epilogue. Now, since I’ve gotten new inspiration from my Shakespeare and Book Promotion classes, I have to scrap a lot of the outline and restart, but I know the corrections I plan on making will better the story overall. There will be a point sometime this coming January where my bedroom wall will be covered in colorful sticky notes.
Over the past couple of years, I have joined writing groups on social media. It helps to have a community that encourages you and you can encourage in return. Also, the inspiration I get from these groups is amazing. I love bouncing ideas off people and it helps me think through plot holes and other issues I have with my manuscript.
Writing is hard. It’s one of the hardest things I do. But I love it so much. To be able to craft my own world and my own characters is a privilege. It’s a form of escapism that I know I will never get bored of. Many days I want to lock myself in my room and just live in the worlds I have created. Many days I don’t want to face reality, so I’ll gladly face fiction.