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Hey everyone! Welcome back to another Bloganuary post…although I’m starting to feel I’m deviating enough and I wonder if they’re even “Bloganuary posts” anymore, LOL. That said, thank you so much to everyone who answered my call for help for this next post! I didn’t think I’d get so many interesting angles to choose from and so I decided to go with all of them
During Blaugust I started a Q&A “series” as a way to introduce myself because I wanted to cover a lot but didn’t necessarily want to write too many posts on the same topic. I’ve decided to fashion this post in a similar way, except that this time the questions will be focused on writing
Why writing? Well, the 6th prompt for Bloganuary is Why do you write? This is something I’ve answered multiple times on the blog but now we’re going to go a bit more “in-depth”
A Writing Q&A
When did you first start to write?
My love for writing probably started around the time I was 10 or 11. I used to have a teacher who would have us do daily challenges. I don’t really remember all the details or if there were other options to choose from, but I always chose this writing task. She would have a folder with a picture inside, and we were supposed to blind-grab one. Then we would write a story based on the picture.
But I was also terrible at writing essays at this age (and until I was probably in high school) because I never really understood their purpose. I’ve always thought this was a fun contrast
Did you start to write regularly after this?
No! But it wasn’t long after. I started to write regularly when I was maybe 13. I was still bad at essays and, as I later learned, notetaking, but my love for writing stories was still there. I think it was around this age that I started to get into fanfiction and then I started my own fanfics. Cute gay ones featuring Sasuke and Naruto, hehehe
I had my own stories notebook and even typed and printed stuff out, not just my own work but some of my number-one fanfics at the time. I also wrote a lot of original stories up until I was maybe in high school. I stopped before graduating but I never stopped writing fanfics
Do you want to be an author? Or work as a writer of some type?
Yes and no? When I was in high school I really considered this. I was actually writing this “novel” and one of my classmates was really invested in it. Funny story, my MC was bisexual and I’d never read any G/G stories before then. In hindsight, it feels like I was secretly revealing I liked girls but like, I never realized it at the time! “Realized” I say as I recall the massive crush I had on my BFF. There were many things I realized only many years later. That’s how disconnected I am from relationships IRL, but def gimme all the 2D ones
Anyway, in college, I took a creative writing class and realized I hated it. Not the writing, but the IRL community aspect of it. I like being anonymous (to some degree) on the internet. That’s not really a thing with being an author. Or at least, I hadn’t seen it done at the time and even now, I feel like it’s not done often. I also realized that going to school for writing would probably make me hate it in the long run. I did that mistake with other loves of mine, which is why I am extremely hesitant to pursue this professionally
I think mainly I don’t like the pressure and responsibility of being a person of note. Plus, I’m not a very good writer anyway! LOL
If I could get paid for the writing I do now, that’s the type of “professional/career” type writing I’d like to do
When did you start blogging?
I started blogging maybe during my third year of university. I suppose that makes it about ten years ago!
Yuni D’uque’s Questions:
Why did you write when you first began?
I guess it depends on what kind of writing and since both are important to me, I’ll answer for both!
Fanfic: I started writing fanfiction because I loved the characters and I guess I wanted more. And, of course, I made it gay because I thought the characters were cute together and knew the anime would never give me that (also, I was gay but didn’t know because I was more into books than IRL romantic relationships). So, I made it myself. I think I also wrote as an outlet for my creativity in general. It’s always easier to write stories, especially of the fluff variety, when I don’t have to create everything myself
Blogging: When I graduated high school, I went to a community college for just under two years. After this, I transferred to a 4-year university. Both of these schools were far from my home so I had to commute every day, but the university was even farther. I was also a transfer student at an enormous campus, and I started to feel like I didn’t belong. I went from a semester school to a quarter school, so each term went from being about 15 – 17 weeks long to only 10 weeks. Everything was very fast-paced and I needed a way to socialize. I was having trouble finding “my people” so to speak
It was around this time that I learned about blogging so I made a diary-style blog that no longer exists today (which I very much regret). A year after that, I learned that people could niche blog and I made my first BL blog!
p.s. Apparently, this still exists!
Why do you write now? Have your takes matured or is that old reason to write still there?
I think that if I break it down to as few words as possible, the reason I write is that I want to express myself creatively and be part of a community. In that regard, I do think I still write for the reasons I wrote when I first started. But I also know that many things have changed and I’m not sure if I’d call that maturing or just a natural state of aging (potentially) out of certain things
In terms of my fanfiction writing, I talk a bit about how things have changed in this post. I (sadly) don’t write as often as I did before so it’s less about letting out my creativity now (though that’s still a big part) and more about…making people happy? I do a lot of gift exchanges so I like it when what I write makes others happy. But I also do it as a challenge to myself. Gift exchanges include prompts and I use that as a way to write things I probably wouldn’t have thought to write
As for blogging, I also talk more about some of my current struggles here. But basically, yes, I feel like a lot has changed here. Mostly it’s my own expectations of myself. At some point, I think blogging went from something I could do in the 10 minutes between classes to something I had to dedicate my whole entire being to. Not exactly a job, not exactly a chore, but a little bit of both. Many of my old posts were very short, often were more writing than pictures, and were just me screaming in bullet format. I still enjoy blogging of course, but it’s…it’s complicated sometimes, LOL
How do you stay on track? What is it that keeps that flame alive? Why do you write but also how have you fed that motivation?
I sort of answered this already for fanfiction. Gift exchanges are mainly what keeps my story writing still alive today. I really have fun writing for people! But it’s also a writing challenge for myself, sort of like when I used to do those activities in school
Actually, I used to accept writing requests a few years back but I had to stop because I had less time to dedicate to writing. I’ve been thinking I’d love to do those again, hehe
As for blogging, I also talked about this a bit during Blaugust. I use monthly challenges to try and keep myself blogging. I especially enjoy challenges that have prompts because they help with direction, which is why I decided to do Bloganuary too. In fact, if my blog weren’t so niche, I think I wouldn’t be so behind on the prompts! I would have just answered them as is. But I like to keep things a certain way here and so I have to twist the prompts to fit my BL/Asian media theme going
I also struggle A LOT even when I’m not blogging for daily blogging challenges, which I talk about here (Not a Daily Blogger) so I’m always very grateful for the community. But mainly, the reason I keep motivated is that I just love writing. I can’t see myself stopping. I can’t do it daily or even in a consistent enough manner (whatever that means), but I always come back to it. Always. Like now!
As for feeding it…I guess I just keep living. I watch things. I read things. And I react to them via this blog
Kay’s Questions:
Do you see yourself writing forever/for a long time? Or do you think you will quit blogging or writing one day?
Quitting the blogging scene has been something I think about way too often. I even tried to a few times. Once was with my book blog. I figured I’d just leave things as they were. I’d been gone for a year, I’d not posted AT ALL (unlike here when I’d come back every few months), and I told myself that if I really wanted to share posts, I’d probably have better engagement levels on Goodreads. I returned and let me tell ya, book blogging engagements suck
Or maybe I do, who knows. I think I didn’t even get 100 likes in a year and I wrote a ton of stuff. I still do it though because I have words that need to leave my system. Maybe one day more people will read them!
And of course, there were these last maybe 2-3 years here where I was “here” but not really. Each time I’d disappear I’d think “maybe it’s time to stop now” and then I’d be back with a post or two, then I’d be gone. Now I’m here saying I’m back for good? Should I be believed?! Even I don’t know
So in that sense, I’m not sure if I will keep blogging forever or for a long time. But I know I have a blog and I know that if I ever want to talk about something, I have a place to do it. And I think that’s what I need. I started blogging because I didn’t have a place to talk about the things I love and now I’ve made my own corner. Writing is hard, which is why I’ve dabbled in things like video and audio, but somehow, I always end up back here
In the writing (in general) sense, yes, I do think I will always write. Another reason I chose blogging over (let’s say) a YouTube channel all those years ago is that I feel I’m more eloquent and expressive in my writing than I am with my face or voice. I don’t have the speaking intelligence to say everything I want or need to on the spot and if I have to script everything, why go to the trouble of then repeating it in video format? Which itself is a whole other editing process that takes forever…
I like that I can write something, then go back and be like “ok what the heck was I trying to say here?” and fix it. Or see something and go, “oh wait, I didn’t say this other thing” and just add it. I wish I could do that with IRL conversations! And I’m just a low-energy person 90% of the time. People would be bored of seeing me not actually screaming like I hope I come off as being on this blog
Ok! I’ll end it here. There’s another set of questions I’d like to answer, but those were more about my writing process so I’d like to dedicate a whole post to that because I have things to say~ So don’t worry Yuu, I’ll get to those soon!
In the meantime, feel free to answer these questions as well! I’d love to know your answers. I’m especially curious about if you see yourself writing forever/for a long time? I think that (as many long-term bloggers have noted) people stop blogging after a few years. If you see yourself stopping, do you think you’ll announce it? Just disappear? Leave your blog or delete it? If you’re not a blogger (or you do more than one kind) what kind of writing do you like to do? What is it about writing that (maybe) gives you the tingles? Why write?
A Nerdy Fujo Cries 