Why do you post at Lit?

[Blind_Justice]

I've read quite a lot of stories, even dared to send feedback to the occasional author. I offered my services as an editor, then the author I worked with and I got to talking, I sent him one of my rough drafts and got a resounding "You totally should post that". I did, intended as a one-off, and now, six years later, I'm staring at 37 submissions. So much for one-shots.

Why do I write? For the same reason I run pen&paper roleplaying games. I love to tell stories. And while the interactivity and unpredictability of a gaming session is its own, fantastic beast for storytelling, some tales are better told alone, without fear of embarrassment.

Right now, with my Geek Pride Day submission done, I'm thinking about taking the plunge and publish commercially. The amount of extra work looming ahead, especially that self-promotion bullshit, scares me though. And I certainly don't have the cash for an agent.

 

[Polyacrylate]

Well... I've only posted two stories, making me worry that I am a little too green to post on a thread like this. I have three more that are *almost* there, if I could just stop tinkering with them. I technically posted a few erotic stories when I was in my early 20s, but they were strokers, and basic ones at that, which I posted on Lit largely to share with the community I had enjoyed. There was little thought put into any phase of that process, and my stories from that time were embarrassingly bad and I took them down a number of years ago.

I deal with a lot of depression and anxiety issues, and have used creative endeavors to keep depression at bay since I was a teenager. First it was music, writing original material in a death metal band.

In my mid 20s, I threw myself into my work, embracing the creativity needed to solve complex, new scientific problems. And as my career took me places I hadn't expected, I ended up in a job that requires little in the way of creativity. I was in my mid 30s before experiencing a job that I would have call 'soul sucking,' but itvwas awful. I became significantly worse during my first year here. But the pay was good, and my family situation was becoming more challenging, so leaving was a tough prospect.

And I still like music, but I don't have time to practice enough to be particularly good anymore... so I started writing, mostly on my phone during my lunch break.

First it was a journal of random thoughts. And as I started documenting whatever weird daydream that cropped up, I began developing them more, treating the project as less of a journal and more of a growing list of rough drafts of stories. And the depression and anxiety issues reduced. They didn't go away (they never do), but the handle I had on them quickly became the best it has been in years.

A bunch of those early ideas were weird, half impossible dirty stories. Then I started writing a fantasy novel. I'm over halfway done with it, but I doubt I'll ever finish it. The tone isnt steady (one minute it's too grimdark, the next too campy), and the themes are too inconsistent. It was a decent start, but I'm not really worried about that project. I may get back to it, I may not.

But I really enjoyed writing it - plotting it and talking through dialogue during my drive home, and finally decided to put together another story, a shorter one. It turned out to be an erotic story. And I wrote more, and eventually set a goal for myself: enter a contest. So I did. It was fun. Then I did it again. One of these days, I'll submit another.

TL;DR: Why do I write? To do something creative to keep dark thoughts and feelings under control. Why do I post here? Largely to share as part of a personal challenge.

 

[Hypoxia]

Songs and histories, which needn't make sense, are easier to write than fiction, which does. Let reality run away with you. In Dylan's protest-song period, he said he read newspaper headlines and the songs wrote themselves.

Any bizarre event can release many fully-loaded plot bunnies. Yes, that jock really DID impregnate all his classmates AND the teacher in the first week of summer school. Yes, girls HAVE married their father or mother. I don't know about real anus-hamsters but hey, could happen!

When my voices insist I write, I post here because I must.

 

[MREDME2]

I post because it amuses me.

Sometimes I learn some really cool stuff.