To make a long story short. Joking–you probably already hate me for writing that.
I saw that 87.5432% of people who use that idiom love mayonnaise on their Chick-fil-A chicken biscuits. Need a minimum of five ketchup packets for their Bojangles cajun chicken filet biscuit combos or scrambled eggs. As well as believe that Bold flavored Chex Mix is superior to the Traditional. Of course, all these have been proven true.
So I’m a fan of the fantasy, sci-fi, and British murder mysteries genres, a geographic information system (GIS) guy for 40 hours a week, and working on becoming a hobby writer. Stormstrouper was my AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) screen name from the early aughts (or the decade from 2000 to 2009). I first decided to reuse that name for my social media and now for this blog.
Until the beginning of this year, I’ve always had a casual attitude toward making art and art activities. I doodled as a kid, crashed a ceramics class at college, tried to go viral on Youtube in my mid-20s, entered a few short stories in writing competitions in my early to mid-30s, and took pottery wheel-throwing classes in my late 30s. Even though I got forms of contentment and enjoyment from all this dabbling, I never thought I was great at any of it. Maybe that’s what my insecurities led me to believe and not from a lack of talent, right?
To circle back, I finally signed up for a continuing education class at the community college for the winter 2022 session. This same thing was attempted several times, but I never found anything interesting to take. That seven-week-long creative writing class between February and March ended up being a very immersive and powerful experience.
Our instructor started each class with us sharing something we wrote during the previous week. The typical read-out loud was from the weekly homework assignment. At first, this was horrible and nerving, but eventually, I grew more comfortable telling my very short stories and poems. That classroom was a safe space. I probably could’ve written some crappy Air Bud or Sharknado fan fiction, and my classmates wouldn’t have discriminated against it. This class helped me overcome some insecurities, encouraged me to embrace the characters inside my head, and was undeniably the real inception point of my hobby writing path.
Now I’m more okay with people hearing my stuff, but something happened last month. I finally decided to start this blog and put my drafts online for anyone to read. What happened was I got recruited to be the (LOL) personality in some social media video content for work. This experience was also compelling and insightful.
The videographer and I had a reminiscing chat about uploading videos to Youtube back in the mid to late aughts. He asked me if I still made videos, and I told him, “naw, because I never created anything people wanted to see.” Then he showed me a video with over 100,000 views of nothing but an orange screen for twenty minutes. I might’ve called the video pointless, and that’s when he reminded me how many views the video and his point clicked. The lesson is to not be afraid to put your stuff out there, good or bad, for the internet community to consume. SOMEONE will watch it, read it, hate it, and hopefully like it or share it.
I plan to regularly post new and revised material on this blog website for anyone to read and comment on. I want to rework the three short stories and poems written for class and put them here. And try the many other forms of creative writing types like movie scripts, song lyrics, essays, journaling, and reaction pieces. Most likely, this will probably be a jumble of randomness. With time I hope to find my style, tell the stories I want to tell, and hopefully, pick up some fans along the way. Who knows, maybe this could become my version of a video of an orange screen that generated over 100,000 views.
Since you have stuck with me this far, I would love to invite you to come back and read my stuff. I know I’m no Neil Simon, George RR Martin, Tolkien, or even a TV writer for the British murder mystery show, Midsomer Murders. Still, maybe one day I will get decently better. When you return, please feel free to leave friendly and constructive comments. Let’s have some fun.
Kind regards.
@stormstrouper