Bubbl3B0t

Note: This was a school assignment.

What is it like when I examine my writing? Great question, but describing the creation process must come first. A fictional story is like a sandwich to me. I like some ingredients so much that they compel me to put them together. When I finish the creation process, I consume the sandwich partially, feel satisfied, and put the rest away.

That is not all I like to make; I like to write essays. I envision myself as a savior. I hear an incorrect idea or contentious topic; I feel it is my sacred duty to bring clarity. An essay becomes a sword crafted for my grand venture against confusion and ignorance. I rush to smith blades from the finest metals with the hottest heat my forge can manage. Sometimes I finish the sword, and sometimes I do not. Either way, the sword is put away for future campaigns I assure myself will come.

Of course, when the passion cools and my eyes freshen, things are different. I open the fridge to see my sandwiches are usually awful. Sometimes the bread is stale or moldy. Sometimes ingredients I thought would go well together do not. Sometimes I am simply bored of the flavor.

A concrete example would be a Halloween story I wrote as a high school freshman for my friends to enjoy. I decided it would be fun to cast myself as a murderous cannibal that hangs out with his non-murderous, non-cannibalistic friends on Halloween while also sneaking off to commit murders and cannibalism. The joke is a subtle contrast with how I'm not really a murderous cannibal that's doing cannibalistic murders. Honestly, I'm fine with that joke; jarring contrast can be fun if used well. My issue is that it felt lazy. My murderous persona had a rotten attitude, wore a shirt reading “how's my trolling?”, and killed people, so he was just some unironic edgy teen.

I'm aware that I sound contradictory. The intent was ironic, but there was not much follow-through. There's a joke where my persona muses that Kevin, an Italian friend, has skin that would make fashionable clothing, and he owns a milk bar because I thought that would be neat. There are even cupcakes made with human flesh as a reference to a scary story I read once. Nothing is inherently wrong with these elements, but they existed as their own jokes, rather than to further the core joke. Maybe “elements” is incorrect; elements are parts of a whole, and these weren't parts of a whole. I plopped things that I wished were elements on the page without much thought about how they fit together. It was a list, not a story. Whenever I look back on past fictional works, I find a lot of them are strings of things rather than organic narratives.

I don't do much fiction writing now. I've had a few ideas here and there, but I don't rush to put them to paper. I've realized I need to jot some ideas down and then come back periodically. If the idea is still interesting, I build on it occasionally. I'm trying to mull over my ideas more rather than push them out prematurely.

Since I don't know anything about smithing, I'll skip the metaphorical language and give a literal assessment of my past essays: a mix of good and bad. It could be because I write more persuasive essays than fictional narratives, but I find there's less to criticize. Looking back on my arguments is more enjoyable because good reasoning means I deserve a pat on the back then for being smart and poor reasoning means I deserve a pat on the back now for being smarter. However, sometimes (especially with unfinished writing) I wonder why the topic animated me. Did I ever need to add my perspective on the effectiveness of recycling? If so, I could've done more than a few frantic searches for citations. Why did I never define what constitutes effectiveness? Where was my outline?

The last question is the most significant difference between me now and then. I try to be reflective about a topic and plan how to address it. Passion feels wonderful, but self-righteousness disguised as intellectualism produces poor work. Being sure of why I care about a topic, the basics of a topic, what constitutes actual research, and what I want to say is key. Perhaps I've learned a little something enjoyable about humility. Exploring an idea rather than making sure my stance on it is known can feel great.

Humility is why I chose Write.as. It's a simple blogging platform with no frills so a writer can focus. I can choose not to have my posts show up in search engines and even make posts anonymous to keep them hidden away from anyone until I feel I'm finished. In the future, I'd like to look back on what I have now and think and much better. I'll hopefully have much to compare here.