Failing Upwards
Why I write and my thoughts on writing.
Let’s talk about writing, a subject that certainly has never been analyzed into oblivion! Surely, no one has thought to dissect and discuss the nature of how we came to write and how to craft quality writing. Of course, I know I’m just adding another addition to the landfill of subjective musings on a specific form of artistic expression that happens to also be a crucial form of communication (one that seems corrupted or eroding, if alarmists are to be validated).
From a young age I have had my struggles with writing, where I often found myself overwhelmed and uncertain of the rules and guidelines of sentence structure. Followed by additional sentences that expand upon a concept that I wished to communicate with the reader in order to establish a narrative. Thus, guiding my thoughts to yours through this passive form of telepathy. But because English is such an old, and complicated, and critical language. A language with a long history of gatekeeping, and cliques, and prejudice; it becomes daunting to adventure towards the goal of being a good writer.
I had a dream in my youth around middle school of wanting to be a fiction writer. It seemed like an amazing career that would offer a productive outlet for my overactive imagination. But the detriment of my journey to write fiction came from my struggles with the structure of grammar and my loose attention span that tended to just parrot pop culture rather than form novel storylines. But youth is also a time of taking in influence and creativity to inspire your own form of a craft. I was a slow reader and still have my struggles with working through long form storylines in novels. I love novels but some may take me weeks or months to get through. I was in love with the idea of creative writing, but I lacked the discipline of how to write creatively.
I made my way through American public education with decent grades but never pushed into a habit of writing creatively by my own accord until I graduated. I started with short stories that were ambitious and entertaining as far as I knew of. Some were derivative of movies or books that I favored but I gave them my own flare and jumped into concepts that I wanted to explore and never found in the stories I consumed. But then this hobby faded, because I lacked feedback from people: my friends hardly ever read what I wrote and submissions to publications went silent or just rejected without feedback. Due to this unread status of my works, I had no way of knowing if I was making anything of quality, if I could improve or grow.
Fast forward through college I had the luxury of taking a creative writing course that rekindled my creative fiction, and I did well enough in the class, taking feedback and learning how to make a more cohesive story. But after that semester, I fell back into not receiving feedback and thus my desire to write seemed to decompose again. My academic life didn’t involve any more in depth English studies for creative writing, so I was relegated to treat reading and writing fiction as a hobby. Hobbies are wonderful when you can afford the time or have the finances to investment in them, so some years I had my love of fiction on the back burner while I worked to pay bills and become an independent adult.
Now for the last five years I have seriously stepped into the realm of fiction writing, now in the form a full-length novel rather than just short stories. My first manuscript took a course of four years to write and rewrite and edit into a form that I was satisfied enough with to pitch to agents to take to publishers. But unfortunately, I encountered another wall of silence that says: you can’t call yourself an author until you obtain some readers. But how can you find readers if the access to the public is controlled by the publishing powers? This struggle to find eyes to take in my work and respond with their views of it has been discouraging, especially when those close to me have not committed to reading my work.
If you’re asking now: Ratidox! Why don’t you just promote yourself through social media to gain readers? Well, dear reader, I struggle with that for three reasons. First, I hate social media, and I am attempting to reduce my use of it to give my mental health some restoration; especially as of this writing as my country and the world at large are in chaotic times that wants to prime me with fear and anger constantly. Second, I want to keep my pen name and my legal name separate, and to do that would require creating separate accounts of social media and constantly promoting through it while still maintaining my personal life with a family and career that are separate from this world of creative writing. (You can incorporate the connection with the first problem to the second one). Third, is that I feel that self-promotion seems cheap when done excessively and when you focus too hard on obtaining views rather than gaining engagement, you diminish the quality of your fan base and reduce the impactful value of your art when it ties to a sense of desperation for gaining attention.
So here I am. Writing my opinions and submitting short stories or chapters of incomplete novels on this website to gain an audience. It’s been slow and currently my subscriber level is barely over ten people since last year. Perhaps I’m too niche with what I write, or perhaps my modest self-promotion is lost in the constant squall of notes and memes that plague Substack and distract from the long form writing we all came here to share. Perhaps I lack instant followers because I don’t use AI to churn out content or perhaps because I’m not displaying a picture of an attractive female or exploring erotic content in my work.
Regardless of this depression state of affairs with my lack of readership, I still persist because I believe that at some point, I will reach the reader that wanted what I wanted to see in works of fiction or in straightforward opinion pieces. I came to writing because it has been the best form of catharsis as I grow older and see less opportunities for major life changing events. I self published my first novel and anyone can buy a copy to read over here. I’m already finishing on my second novel and have a third that is half completed, with many more ideas in the works for future stories. If you have enjoyed this esoteric tale of mine, then please subscribe and give me some feedback about my work. Check out my book if you want to, hopefully you like it. I want to improve and share my views with the world in a way that helps people think and reflect. Thank you for being here as I fail my way to being an author.