I have been writing for about ten years now, maybe a little longer than that. But I am not great with numbers. I love the craft and being able to have the creative freedom to engage with the different themes and genres I am interested in.
I saw this question on one of the suggested prompts on WordPress, and decided to make a full post out of it.
The word “most” implies that the idea was for me to pick just one thing that I enjoy the most. But I am not one that is good (or quick) with making sound decisions between one thing and another. (Seriously, ask anyone who’s been to a restaurant with me or watched me make a simple and seemingly easy decision.)
One of the biggest things I enjoy about being a writer is being able to completely develop my characters in any way I wish, even if it’s not through the tradition route of sitting down and writing a straight up story. Sometimes I do things in my head.
Like, when I was younger and going through watching multiple seasons of Big Brother whenever I got the chance to. Sometimes, I’d make up full seasons of different combinations of my OCs. One of the biggest things I enjoy about being a writer is being able to completely develop my characters in any way I wish, even if it’s not through the tradition route of sitting down and writing a straight up story. Sometimes I do things in my head. Like, when I was younger and going through watching multiple seasons of Big Brother whenever I got the chance to. This all was mostly mental and mostly written in shorthand nonsense in a notebook or two somewhere that I lost. But I’d come up with alliances, rivalries, odds of whether or not someone would be more physically competitive or socially competitive. I haven’t done it for all of my characters, but I have definitely used my experience doing that to improve how I write my characters.
Another thing I have really enjoyed about writing is the idea of the rewrite. I started writing in my late teens as a heavily closeted slightly too Christian guy. The things I wrote back then were a bit janky, a bit erroneous. You know it’s a bad thing when a friend can easily make you flustered by reading to you from your debut novel, because DEAR GOD some of the things I wrote in it were so cringe.
I think being able to improve on previously written work, especially more than five years after it’s initial conception has been super helpful. Pretty much all of my published work from that time (Four Short Stories/One Novel) have been almost completely rewritten.
Completely rewritten. The bare skeletons of the stories are mostly the same, but the flesh and guts are completely new. Sorry. Weird way to phrase that. But you get my meaning. Rewriting gives me a chance to take something older, and give it new life with a fresh new style and some love and care it may not have been able to recieve before. I have given plenty of examples of changes I have made to these updated works so I won’t rehash them all here.
Another thing I enjoy about writing is that there’s such freedom in the way we can use our speech. As a writer, I can take something that is bothering me about life and write it into a scenario to express my thoughts. Or even process them. Concepts like “No one should have that much money.” or “Homophobia never leads to anything good.” are just a few concepts I like to talk about sometimes. Or maybe I’ll write about and process my bad feelings. You guys read my piece with the lion and flamingo bros. It was a scene I wrote because I was feeling that exact way. I went from having an amazing weekend to weeks after weeks of working at a job that is slowly taking my joy and energy.
There were a lot of words there. And honestly, I am glad I wrote them. It’s been way too long since I have written anything solid. Hope you all enjoy! The plan is to write a bunch of posts and schedule them for the next few days!
Scribbles of a Chee 
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