My Creative Writing Journey

Everything started six years ago. I was with my sister watching a sci-fi movie titled “CHAPPiE”. Usually, when I watch a movie, I would imagine myself either as one of the characters or as an additional character in the story. Then, I would have countless nights dreaming about it. My mind apparently loves making stories, whether embarrassing or out of this world.

CHAPPiE was the movie that really caught my attention, even weeks after watching it, I would still think about it longer than any other movies I have previously watched. So much so, I decided to write my first story.

At the time, I had no idea what it would take to produce a good story. I did not follow any rules regarding storytelling, and if it is a law, I would be the first person to break them all. Countless times. It was my first time anyway so it made sense.

I remember the days when I had no idea how to properly use POV (point of view). This made my works looked like comics, changing perspectives back and forth, in a single chapter.

The first chapter I wrote was around 700 words. This also did not have any proper baseline or plot to begin with. I literally just wrote one and felt good after. And when I did write one, I would hand it over to my mother who was my editor (respect for her for reading my effortless work).

One day, she asked me who was talking in this chapter, or to whom this dialogue belonged. I wasn’t able to come up with a good answer, so my mother suggested separating the POVs into different chapters: one perspective in this chapter, and another perspective in another chapter.

After reading and editing my embarrassing works, my mother asked me where I should publish them. Hearing from others, which were my elementary classmates (we are still friends), I discovered and decided to go with Wattpad. Lo and behold, I published my first story months after watching CHAPPiE.

Now, 15 years old me would ask for a celebration, but I, as 20 years old, would hide in vanish in embarrassment. Why? Because at the time, I had no idea about different genres, meaning, the first story I published was a crossover fan fiction. I now feel uncomfortable talking about it. Joking. Or am I?

The story had around 40 chapters, all of which involved my own characters and other fictional well-known ones. From CHAPPiE to Five nights at Freddy’s, to Avatar, and so on.

Enough said.

I don’t remember why, I lost my steam and stopped adding new chapters to the story, and eventually (and thankfully) discontinued it. It was only the beginning.

A few months after discontinuing the cringe-worthy work, I published another story, this time, I started writing around 1,500 words per chapter. Unlike the first one, this had a somewhat robust baseline, but no plot. And like the first one, it featured my characters interacting with some other fictional well-known ones. It is also my first story that had a beginning and an end. A complete story, that is. Finally, something I feel proud of, somehow.

Gradually, creative writing became a hobby of mine and I would later produce more stories. Some are embarrassing to think about it still. I stayed around writing 1,500 words per chapter for a long time and eventually reached 3,000 words. However, these stories still have no solid baseline and plot, and my improvement reached its plateau due to ignorance and arrogance.

As I grew older, I became aware of it. And it lowered my self-esteem and eventually I lost grip on my passion. Writer’s block became a common thing, so much so, that there is this one moment where I couldn’t write anything, nor think of something for a long time.

Funny as I remember it now, there are days when I researched how to improve my writing and how to capture and maintain readers’ attention, but I stood too tall and was hard-headed to implement them, hence, I had this duality mindset. Luckily, before it got any worse, I decided to take a hiatus.

During my hiatus, I discovered a fandom and decided to join that community. It was awkward and embarrassing for the first couple of weeks, but I eventually got the hang of it and started making friends and this led me to my discovery of role-playing.

I guess getting out of my comfort zone really did the trick. Because when I first joined a role play, my ego was shattered by how incredible their story-making skills were. The details, the flow, the characters, and how they show not tell, were some of the things I wished I could have before my hiatus.

Eventually, I got the hang of it as well and gradually I exited my hiatus by going back to the basics of storytelling and starting from scratch. In time, I was able to create and publish my first, somewhat proper, story. The catch? When I said “going back to the basics of storytelling”, I mean it. That said, the story I published after my hiatus is a fanfiction.

However, I don’t feel embarrassed about it. Why? Because compared to my first cringe fan fiction, it is remarkably better. In fact, skimming through it right now, I couldn’t believe I wrote it. And I couldn’t believe I can produce something better. And all it took is a little push out of my space, and some satisfying face slap of reality.

Slowly, and thankfully, I got my writing steam back. And it absolutely felt good! After publishing my first fanfiction post-hiatus, I decided to “remaster” one of my old and original works. And the outcome was something I honestly didn’t expect.

Just like the two aforementioned fan fictions, the differences between the two originals are dumbfounding. However, it still does need some revamping (like a lot), because I skipped so many necessary steps in remaking this story. I’ll add that in the pipeline.

There you go. That’s my entire creative writing journey, 6 years squeezed into dozens of paragraphs.

PRESENT

I’m currently remaking another one of my originals, this time, I will definitely implement and exercise these new techniques that I both learned from the internet and reading stories. I did experience one writer’s block while I was making the first draft, but it only took me a week to recover. I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon now that I’m writing the third draft.

And, this year, I was finally able to launch my first professional website and entered blogging (still mastering it).

FUTURE PLANS

I will continue producing more stories, however, I’ll be also utilizing my other hobbies to overcome future writer’s blocks by creating inspirational artworks for my book covers or some scenes and/or taking photographs that I can use to visualize or create a scene with. All of which will depend if it fits the theme of the story.

I plan to search for more publishing websites to reach more audiences. Believe it or not, two acquisition editors contacted me regarding moving my works to their publishing websites. I didn’t jump on the opportunity yet, but definitely something not to consider. An unexpected plan B?

I want to expand my creative writing knowledge by upgrading it into a career. I’ll probably take content writing, or technical writing since I am tech-savvy (but not that much), perhaps script writing—it catches my interest the most because it will surely upgrade my dialogues, maybe copywriting since I will (someday) start promoting my brand and works.

There are more to choose from, but I know all of these will be beneficial and will bring more value, color, details, and depth to my stories.

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Here’s the list of stories I’ve created for the past 6 years, all sorted by oldest:

1. DPSN (original title lost)

- February 20, 2016

- 42 chapters (discontinued)

2. End of The Great

- December 21, 2016

- 44 chapters (completed)

3. The Reconciliation of the Forgotten One

- December 12, 2017

- 21 chapters (completed)

- First installation for sub-series titled ROTFO

4. DPSN : Game Over

- April 8, 2017

- 40 chapters (completed)

5. The Disparate One

- May 3, 2018

- 82 chapters (completed)

6. DPSN : The Strategy

- November 12, 2018

- 9 chapters (discontinued)

7. The Retaliation of the Forgotten One

- April 5, 2018

- 1 chapter (discontinued)

- Second installation for sub-series titled ROTFO

8. Recorded Deaths Vol. 1

- November 25, 2018

- 1 chapter (discontinued)

9. I was at work…

- May 27, 2019

- 3 chapters (discontinued)

10. DPSN : The Denouement

- November 18, 2019

- 1 published chapter (discontinued)

11. DPSN : Two Machines

- January 9, 2019

- 1 published chapter (discontinued)

12. DPSN : Different Species

- May 4, 2020

- 1 published chapter (discontinued)

13. The Black Market King

- January 30, 2021

- 19 published chapters (completed)

14. The Disparate One (remade)

- July 5, 2021

- 37 published chapters (completed)

15. (coming soon)

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I’ll be regularly updating this article.

UPDATE: May 28, 2022

Changed the "second draft" to "third draft" in PRESENT section.

Added link to another blog post titled "My Photography Journey" in FUTURE section.