On Writing

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public."
-Sir Winston Churchill

A family member gave me a bookmark with this quote on it and it is indeed a true statement. Writing is one of my hobbies, and often one that consumes a lot of time I have. And it isn't so much the blogging aspect of writing but rather the idea of writing a story.

I spend a lot of my time daydreaming, mainly creating other worlds and writing stories along with them in my head. I've done this for as long as I can remember, when i was a child I would fall to sleep to a story I was creating and the next night I would continue to flesh out the story from the night previous. I don't know who does this, but I did it a lot. In fact, my stories would get so complex as I developed them that I didn't remember where they began. I would play act stories as well, my brother and I would play War with stuffed animals and would continue our story each time we played. It progressed to figures as I got older, until I got to old to play, but I was always creating these stories and these characters, all of which I don't remember now and I wonder about it.

I didn't actually start writing down these stories until I was seventeen, when in a writing class I was told to write a story about a character. I did so, and I liked the character so much I decided to write more about him. And my addiction to writing began.

I have a bajillion stories in my head at any given moment I assume. My writing is far from clean and coherent. My first story is so painful to read now due to grammar errors and style (though the story itself isn't bad) that I've wanted to rewrite it, and have tried except for I have come across a problem, that story has already been told, I am not interested in retelling it.

If I could have any profession in the world, I think I would be most satisfied with being an author. People have asked me why i don't publish my stories or at least allow people to read them and I have thought about this myself. However, I see my stories as something for myself and it feels odd to share them. Also, I think the subject matter I dwelve into has something to do with that.

I'm not interested in happy stories apparently. If I care about a character, I put them through a hardship that no sane person should ever have to endure. Its the precise opposite of what I would want somebody to go through in real life I would think. But I have discovered that this is how I personofy my character, how they become real to me is how they handle various hardships. Recurring themes are also present, making me wonder if I'm just writing the same story with a different set of characters under slightly different circumstances.

But i think it is the nature of the hardships these characters face that makes me reluctant to let anybody read them. Being a conservative, my writing sometimes appears to be the antithesis to my beliefs, and I would think that a lot of people would look at the story and wonder what I was thinking when i wrote it. Why would I be interested in this.

I think my stories also help me articulate how I view different stances, or looking at a social issue, I tackle that issue and let the story write itself. And I think in some ways, the stories reflect myself, making them deeply personal. As I think about it now, looking at my stories and how they are written, it makes me wonder how I illustrate various aspects of the story and tackle recurring themes.

At last count, I think I have close to eight or nine stories (some are continuations or closely linked to others, so the count is a little skewed on account of that) that are rather lengthy, in the neightborhood of 200+ pages, with the longest somewhere around 600. And there is no end for some of them that I see.

And every now and then, i will go on a writing binge where all i want to do is write.

Yes, this is a monster of a hobby that can suck your life away.

I need a new hobby. One that doesn't kill my time like writing does.