From the Beginning to Today
So, I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid and almost all of that came from wanting to make up and share stories with other people. This almost certainly comes from my dad - who did tell stories to me, which I later realized was basically freeform roleplaying, and had similar storytelling aspirations of his own. And when I first began writing, it was in a play-by-post forum specifically for Dungeons and Dragons. And I was not horrible at it.
The thing that I failed to realized until much later in my life is that I was not horrible at writing words that went along with a bunch of other people that were writing words that combined to tell a story. If you've never experienced play-by-post before, it is effectively a communal writing exercise, where everyone contributes their bit to tell a greater whole. If you've experienced tabletop roleplaying, it is still a very different experience. People have hours, if not days, to think of the perfect response, and spend so much more time describing how their character thinks, instead of pure action and reaction. Things are slower, but characters are more consistent. And, in a lot of ways, more constructed, less surprising, and - in my experience - less interesting.
I was under the assumption that I was a good writer. Or, at least, a good storyteller. The folly of youth, I suppose.
No, I was decent at coming up with a story. And okay at coming up with characters. But I was not good at meshing everything together. Put whatever I wrote onto an audience that may be receptive but isn't necessarily interested, and I could not grab that interest. There was no pizzaz.
I learned this when I was trying to tell something to my dad - the same dad who instilled this interest in the first place - over lunch. I picked up that he wasn't actually following along - no active listening cues or anything - and I just stopped. And never started again. And he didn't notice. I realized that, for all I cared about whatever I was doing, I was actually ignorable background noise. The things I cared about weren't actually important.
Now that may sound like I'm blaming my dad, or throwing shade on the idea that "a parent should care about their child's interest, because it's their child's interest" or whatever. And I'm not going to pretend that it didn't sting. But it was a valuable note to my life - that I need to make something worthwhile before anyone's going to care about it. That just having an idea or a story or a character is worthless if you can't execute on it.
Unfortunately, I'm a sensitive little bitch, so instead of putting things out into the world and "learning my craft" and evolving as I practiced, I kept everything private. I figured that I'd know when I was good enough and could finally make a breakthrough when that happened. But since I am constantly alternating between thinking everything I do is fantastic and everything I do is shit, I know that I am a horrible judge of my own quality.
This is why I'm writing publicly, even as I know the quality isn't there. I saw somewhere recently the sentiment of "if you do things poorly, no one will remember them; if you do things well, people will remember them." The writing equivalent of "only you remember your cringy moments from high school." So, there's really nothing keeping me from writing slop and posting it other than my own insecurities. No one's going to notice anyway. No one will pay attention.
And even as I grow frustrated at my writing over this NaNoWriMo, not going into as much depth as I want to, nor spending enough time on the edit to make words good, I am... satisfied. Proud, even? I've spent more time dedicated to writing than I have in a long time, which is likely not reflected in the sheer number of words coming out. I've spent more time on this site than I have in the prior decade that it's been up. I don't like the quality of the thing that I'm making right now, but I can see hundreds of distinct ways that I can improve it. And that brings a tear to my eye, I guess. That, finally, I can see the thing in myself that I like to see in other people - someone trying at something they care about.
Even though I suspect none of the people who this is directed toward will see this, a large part of why I've stuck with it is just because I did share the fact that I'm doing this publicly. And even though there weren't many words said, I still felt the support from the group that paid attention, and I feel like I can't let them down. Just a small pat on the back or a headpat or whatever, even if virtual, is keeping me going.
So, yeah, I guess I'm sticking with it. If A Thing's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Badly - definitely sticking with that second half so far.