Over this past month I came across two posts on the blog Writability: Why I have yet to write a sequel and 15 steps. They are both great post describing the writing process and they both made me realize something: I may never be published. Not because I am bad or don't have what it takes but because I find it hard to just write a novel. For me, my stories stemmed from the worlds I created in my adolescent days when things got bad. They were all coping mechanisms I created just to make it through each day and then, when I was 13 I decided to start writing them into stories. Through this I discovered I was actually really good at creating worlds and characters and plots and pretty rubbish with wording, grammar, and spelling (some of which I still am) but somehow I got accepted into one of the top writing high school programs in America and began being labeled as "the writer" by my family.
I remember after my first month feeling useless, all of my stories and essay's were covered with more red marks than typed words and their was nothing magical about my syntax, in fact I still didn't fully understand what syntax was. So, one day, I built up the courage to ask the director of my conservatory how I even got into the program. How did I, an 18 year old who was still getting her "you(')r(e)s" confused, get accepted over all of the 1200 applicants they got a year?
He simply replied, "You're stories. True, you are a terrible writer but you can fix that, being a terrible storyteller on the other hand is something you can't. Most of your peers are so stuck on their vocabulary and writing formats that they will only make their readers feel stupid or bored, while you can create worlds and characters out of thin air and make them magical."
Though he confirmed my suspicions of being a terrible writer, he also gave me the confidence to fix it through a pretty awesome backhanded compliment.
The next day he brought me some books on grammar and syntax and told the other teachers to be harsher on their writing edits. Because of this we discovered I got my grammar from Jane Austin and my awful spelling and inconstant syntax from growing up with parents from two different countries (For those of you who don't know, England and America spell a lot of words differently and have different spelling rules as well as having different words for different things). By the time the year was over I had improved ten fold and even got a job there as an assistant to the conservatory for the the next few years.
And though I have now improved greatly and should consider myself as a writer, I don't. Through all of this I have learned I care more about the world and characters as a whole than the story they are portrayed in. Because of this I have spent the last six years writing one book because there is so much that I have yet to understand. I'm merely a storyteller. Someone who might one day publish her world in book form but who will never make a living off of publishing different books through out her life.
And to be honest, I'm completely fine with that (even though I still admire and fangirl over every writer I come across).
Sincerely,
HKx
P.S. That being said, there are some other minor worlds I've created but who knows if they will ever actually see the light of day because I still feel like everything I write is a bit dyslexic and doesn't show the story that I want it too.
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