When I am entirely alone, I love to turn on my favorite songs and write out story ideas. Often, these story ideas are inspired by events in my own life, aspirations I have, or things that pique my curiosity. There is something about the combination, the right song looping quietly in the background, the cursor blinking in an empty document, the whole world momentarily out of the room, that makes a certain kind of writing possible.
While I have discarded many story ideas over the years, with years of notebooks and Google Docs bearing the proof, the core themes of the works and my own passion for the arts persist deeply within my work. The same characters keep walking back onto the page in slightly different clothes; the same questions keep asking themselves, more clearly each time.
Though I have often considered submitting my writing for competitions or to wider audiences, I have often struggled to share such personal work with strangers, for in sharing there is often judgement and mockery. Would my writing be perceived as too naive or poorly written? Would the criticisms stunt my writing and discourage my passion for writing and growth, as it has for many others? Every writer I have talked to has a version of this fear. Most of them cope by not showing anyone anything until it is much too late.
Though I love the idea of sharing and connecting with others, I remain frightened of exposing vulnerable parts of myself to the world, and, as my family can attest, have only warmed up to the idea gradually over time. It has been a slow project. A page here, a paragraph there, read out loud when the room was safe enough.
Recently, I have begun making progress in my writing journey. I recently found a collaborator willing to read my work and help me submit to competitions, someone I knew I could trust. Though I was initially afraid to share my "silly" hobby with somebody else, my collaborator was willing to provide me honest, constructive, and respectful feedback on my ideas for characters, story progression, tone, and style. It was a refreshing change from the fear I had felt before, and I finally felt like I had been able to connect more deeply with my creative side.
After months of working together, my friend proposed the idea of creating a collaborative web writing project to be displayed with a larger audience. Though I was terrified of the idea of my juvenile writing being visible to the world, I was eventually talked into agreeing. I think a lot of writers reach a version of this conversation, whether or not they admit it, the moment where a private practice is asked, gently, to consider being a public one.
As we progressed with development, planning characters, story ideas, and overarching themes and arcs, I found myself excited rather than paralyzed by fear. For once, the opportunity to share my writing with a collaborator and dear friend by my side felt exciting rather than bone-chillingly terrifying. I felt more invigorated than I had ever before about writing, and my connection to my hobby became more empowering than embarrassing. It truly felt like I had opened a new chapter.
Though the work I am writing remains to be finished, I remain excited about the possibility that this new opportunity offers, and I hope to continue creating and writing well into the future, no matter my choice of career. Writing truly offers me an outlet for expression and joy, and I cannot wait to see where it leads me.
