It all started with a commitment.
I just wanted to share something. YouTube was too out there for me, but I realised I could write.
There are so many stories inside my brain.
I want to write them down.
No, I NEED to write them down.
In the end, I do not know why I started. Just one day, I was like, I am going to write and publish it on my website. (That website did not exist at that time, by the way.)
That made it all spiral up, and I was just doing it. In one week, I had a domain name and a hosting service, and another week later, I had a website running.
Then I published my first blog post.
It was so nerve-wracking. I did not know what to do with myself. But then, after pushing myself and publishing the third post, I was at peace that everybody could read what I wrote.
That is okay if it is bad or has mistakes.
All I needed was to continue.
I had no idea what to write about. I just knew that I had to do this and that it would be good for me. Something inside was pushing me to do this. So I did. In a way, I started to document my life.
And with writing come even more ideas about what to write about. It all comes from doing.
That is what I learned in the past 8 months — how to stop thinking and planning and just do. Just write, just edit, and just publish. I put myself on a schedule — publish once a week. I did not have any routine for writing itself. I wrote when I had the time. At one point, my writing trigger was to write when I was tired from the day, and then the words just flowed through me without any reserve.
There were bad times — a month in the summer — when I did not write anything because I put too much pressure on myself to do better.
I had too high expectations, and I crumbled.
Then, from December through January, I took an unplanned break from publishing and writing because I had too much to do at university. It was hard to restart, but I am doing it.
Now without the big pressure — just the enjoyment of writing, publishing, and seeing something finished.
I love the feeling.
Now I am writing a lot less and more at the same time. I write less on my blog, but I started to write a story that has been sitting in my mind for a while. I had daydreamed about characters for years, so I decided to finally write them down.
Gosh, writing a story is hard.
There are so many things to consider. I have so much rising respect for writers the more I write.
Writing is hard.
Especially distinct characters, realistic dialogue, descriptions, and world-building. It feels like I have grabbed something that I cannot handle. But I enjoy it when I do not put too much pressure on myself.
When I start to dream about writing a book, then everything goes off the rails. I feel so much pressure again to write more, better, and coherently that it takes all the enjoyment out of it. I like to write because it is freeing; I just want to be in the world that I created and see where it goes. But thinking about how great it should be or could be just paralyses me, and I start to hate the idea of writing anything down. Because, what if it is not good enough? What if it is bad or cheesy?
I have to tell myself that that is okay because I have never written a book before — a big story.
I should start smaller.
It is like a beginner drawer, that likes to sketch on some random days, suddenly decides that they are going to paint with oils on a big canvas to create an elaborate scene with many personages. Of course, it is going to feel overwhelming, and you are going to fail at painting anything good. It does not mean that you cannot do better or improve. But it does not make sense to paint the big thing; just start with small sketches.
And I am going to say that writing does not come naturally or easily to me. I am slowly cultivating the skill. I love to write, but that does not mean that I am the best. I would not say that writing is my strong point.
It is slowly developing as a skill that I am decent at.
But at this point, I mostly do it for enjoyment. I love writing, no matter how hard it is sometimes…