Creative writing has always been a hobby of mine. Even before I was filling marble copybooks with horrible self-insert stories in middle school, I was writing about knights and chivalry and goodness in grade school and continued to draw and write shitty stick figure comics well into high school. Telling stories has always been fun for me. It's self-serving, ultimately, as all creative arts are I think - Being able to spellbind people with words, make them feel, make them think? It's the best magic trick in the world. Sometimes it's a trick that gets everyone, though, magician included. Everything I wrote back then was shit.
That's the problem. I had an audience - in elementary school, it was teachers who told me I did well. In middle school, it was myself and my best friend at the time. In high school, those beat up copybooks got passed around and others helped contribute. It was all shit, but at the time everyone involved seemed to think it was good. I bought the hype. Looking back on it, I think I know better, but that leads to the current dilemma and/or thinking point.
I still write. I'm a part of a forum with a healthy amount of users. It's a roleplaying community, and we all write and share and talk. It's a roleplaying community, which means I instinctively hate 95% of the people there. It's cyclical with me - if I despise something, if I feel it shouldn't be at an intrinsic level, I inevitable get drawn into it. I run an in-game event that, when first introduced, I thought was completely retarded. I'm a pillar of a community that, when I first discovered it, I wrote off as a cliquish hugbox. I wasn't entirely wrong about that second point (maybe the first one, too). The difference now is that I'm inside of it.
It started simply because I heard people I didn't like talk about it. I checked it out, and saw that 1) they had a reputation system similar to reddit upvotes and 2) the people I didn't like were considered well-liked. At a glance, I judged the entire community. Sure enough, though, I'd be dragged onto it in time when people I did like mentioned it. So I started posting in my downtime - writing, specifically, a long and tedious section of hard character progression. The thread was almost completely a solo affair, the only other user who contributed a little bit also a new person. But it got views, and my time on the internet as a self-repulsed writer has taught me that views are a dangerous thing.
I've got the inclination to hate everything I write. I remember liking what I did in elementary school, in middle school, in high school. In my free time. I remember thinking "YES! This is amazing!" and then feeling like an idiot years later. Now, I'm a little more direct. People liked what I wrote then. People like what I write now. What I wrote then was shit. Ergo, what I write now is also shit. Part of me knows that's bullshit, but that's all also self-serving.
There are people who have given me good feedback, and I trust that they mean what they say. I also can't help but wonder... Are they buying the hype? Over the past year I've risen to being the most e-peen circlejerked member on the website. I have a reputation there, one of being a straight-shooting elitist dick, but I often say what others won't. People won't agree with me in public, but they do click that little +1 button. Leave a note saying "Thanks for stepping up." By opposing the circlejerk, I have become the circlejerk. Weird.
But I write, and I hate it, and people tell me I did a good job anyway. And part of me thinks they're wrong, even if I want them to be right. It's an ego thing. I think I've got them under the spell, even when it's been proven I don't. The concept of e-fame has come up a bit, too, but I don't want to touch that right now. Too much to think about.
I've forgotten my point. Shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment