On Writing

On Writing

Today I almost forgot that I needed to write a blog post. For once it wasn’t because I wanted to make an excuse to not write (which happens more often than I care to admit). No, today I almost forgot because I was already in the writing sphere, just operating in a different hemisphere.

This past week a friend from graduate school emailed me the first 30 pages of his fantasy novel to look over and offer feedback. I was honored. I haven’t sunk my teeth into a project like this in a while. He’s trying to get it cleaned up and ready to submit to a publisher. Most of my buddies from grad school write in genres that I’m not comfortable with, genres that I don’t know a lot about. But fantasy… fantasy is my jam, man!

I worked on my first pass of it the last couple days. I’ll go back over it a couple more times before I send it back to him with my notes.

In case he’s reading this, I will say it’s good. And I will say that I’m a little annoyed that I only have the first 30 pages of it! Can’t wait to read it in print!

He also asked me if I’m still writing. Which struck me a little funny. I mean. It’s a fair question. More than fair.

I did take a pretty solid break from writing actively. I haven’t pursued publishing like my other grad school buddies have. They’ve done some great work getting themselves published and moving up in the writing world.

So it’s a fair question. And thankfully I was able to say that I have been writing. Just not as much as I would like. But that’s changing this year.

Somehow my writing came up with some coworkers a couple weeks ago. And one of them asked me what I like to write. I told him that I like writing Fantasy, but have been doing more non-fiction lately.

This coworker then followed up by asking me if I like to write “fantasy” or “fantasy.” And it’s hard for me to describe how he was giving them characteristics with his voice… but one of them was clearly suggesting something raunchy and the other something… bland?

I snorted and said, “Like epic or high fantasy. Tolkien. Elves. Dragons. That kind of thing.” Nothing bland about it.

“Oh, I didn’t know if you meant something like 50 Shades of whatever.”

Of course, this guy doesn’t know me that well—he doesn’t know genres that well either apparently. I tried to explain that that series is more in the Romance genre, to which he responded that he wouldn’t classify those as romance either. I decided not to argue with him and to simply say that that wasn’t my cup of tea and left the conversation there.

I’m enjoying getting back into my fantasy world though. After I finished my first pass of my friend’s story I flipped back to my own writing. I’m working on buffing up my thesis again. In 2015 it got pared way down, and after doing my read through last fall it was clear that I needed to add back to it again. It’s been fun.

But that’s why I almost forgot I needed to take a break and write a blog post! Here’s to writing! Now I’m going to get back to it!