Why I write – #F4TFriday

When I saw this week’s Food 4 Thought Friday prompt, I thought it would be a good idea to take up the challenge and talk about what pushes me to write. If you have been following up on my posts, then you already know a bit about my past and know that I grew up with a lot of siblings and not a lot of direction in my life. Writing was definitely not something I had intended to do with my life in the beginning. I was more the type to not have a plan for the future until about 5 minutes before it happened, which meant much of my free time was dedicated to playing video games as much as possible. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what I would do, I just didn’t feel like I needed to worry about it at that moment.

My first idea (when I was 12) was to go into archaeology, but that was quickly abandoned. My more practical idea was to study chemical engineering. In the end, my step-father had already made the decision that I was going to go into the Navy, essentially by not providing me any support to do anything else. I took a writing course in high school as a required course but wasn’t as astute about it as I would be now. However, I would later discover an interest when I found my mother’s old typewriter and thought it might be fun to type a quick idea for a horror movie. It wasn’t very good at all, and I never made it past 5 minutes of screentime, but I felt good putting one of my own ideas on paper. When I think back to that writing class, I think the reason I didn’t enjoy it was because I was given specific assignments rather than the freedom to write my own ideas.

It would be another twelve years before I would write anything again, and when I did, it was for selfish reasons. I had an ex who, for some reason, really enjoyed badly-written fantasy novels she had a habit of stealing from Walmart. I tried reading a few of them and found them to have incredibly weak plots featuring the ‘over-powered’ characters with too much plot armor. Essentially, I said “Even I could write something better than this!” and to prove my point, I did. I eventually got an idea for a YA fantasy story and spent 2 years working on it. Even managed to get 10th place in a fiction novel competition with 130 other authors.

Around that same time, I found myself dabbling in erotica as well. It was some terrible stuff, but I found myself excited to keep writing it. It was the first time I had come across a vocation that gave me the desire to learn more, to do better, to want to keep doing it without needing some sort of incentive. But most of all, when I put my work out there, I really feel like I’m putting a bit of myself into the world as well. A bit of my personality exists in every character I write. Every scene is inspired by an event in my life, no matter how small. So my reason for why I write is simply because: this is me.

My writing is a reflection of my life at every stage. In the beginning, I was inexperienced, pervy, and not really knowing where I belonged, and my erotica showed that as well. As I’ve matured, so have my stories. As I search to learn more, I write about what I discovered. And with every word that comes out, I leave a mark that identifies who I am. This is uniquely me, and I’ve never felt more like the real me than I do when I’m here. If you were to ask me what I would blog about if I couldn’t blog about sex and smut anymore, my answer would be that I couldn’t. I would never be able to keep writing if I couldn’t write what I wanted to.

Yes, there is more to me than all of this. I’m a gamer, a chef, a husband, a Dungeon Master, a graphic designer, and many other things. But this is just to say that this is where I feel most like myself. This is my sanctuary.