kuya jay🧟‍♂️🧟‍♂️

AGGRO is 50,000 words, and was written entirely during the month of November (as was the style at the time). It doesn't have much of a conclusion. It might as well be fanfiction of Sword Art Online, for all that I’d put in work to design an original MMORPG world for the characters to be stuck in while the plot happens. It's the story of a digital game master, struggling to protect thousands of people who are locked into a virtual reality world by a hacker.

My first novel is quite interesting for me to read now. I had some annoying habits like starting a piece of dialogue with one character, and then having a separate character finish the line as if the two were psychic twins or something. I somehow thought it would be a good idea to give my main character waist-length platinum blonde hair (even done ironically, this was funny for me to read later). The plot is like the intersection of a disaster film and a love triangle, and I hadn't yet learned that it was alright to use all of my vocabulary when writing fiction.

(Behold! Some of my earliest unpublished writing. It's not good.)

But I can still see the seeds of the writer I would become in those pages. It's not *badly written* (or at least, not very), for all that it is derivative and not at all a great story. It has sentences and grammar and stuff. I was twenty-six that November, and had spent the better part of my free time reading since the age of eight. I knew what a good novel should look like... I just didn't know how to get there yet.

In contrast, the little red book next to that stack of paper is my very own, leather-bound copy of REVERSAL (thanks to @bardicc-inspo, who did a marvelous job on the binding). It is 55,610 words, took me one and a half months to write, and is a better book in every single respect.

Genuinely, Mareth did such a good job on binding this thing for me -- I'm so incredibly glad I commissioned them for this! <3

Turns out, fourteen years of practice makes a huge difference when you're an artist -- shocker, I know! This is true for any kind of creative pursuit, btw. I'm sure if I asked any one of my more visually artistic mutuals to compare their earliest drawings to their later work, they would be forced to admit that they can see a difference. Progress is not always linear; it is almost never *fast*. But would AGGRO have inspired fanart?

I think not.

(Thanks so much to @atticastagrr, @dogerbooger and @sicklecellvamp for permission to include their priceless artwork in my very own copy of the book <3)

I guess the reason I wanted to write this post is to encourage anyone who may be walking this long and sometimes lonely path with me. I'm nearly 40 now -- I get the feeling that I might be a little older than some (not all!) of the people I share this fandom space with. I want you to remember that it is never too late to practice your art. Never too late to start something new. Never, NEVER too late to share your passion for something with other people.

After writing AGGRO, I participated in an additional four NaNoWriMos. I wrote a bunch of one-shots. I won a competition for a collection of 30 drabbles, and then seriously tried to publish an original work of 65K words -- a novel that was both too short and *way* too dark for a trad publisher to touch with a ten foot pole. After that "failure" I just... stopped writing.

For four years.

The reason I started again -- the reason I rediscovered my love for this craft -- is largely the encouragement and positive feedback I've gotten from all of you. I didn't start writing fanfic until I was 39 years old. It's been both an adventure and an education, and one that I'm very glad I *allowed myself* to try. Thanks to all of you, I now know one thing for certain:

I

*can*

write.

Which means that you can, too.

Keep writing, keep drawing, keep practicing your craft and I *promise* you -- whatever level you are at right now -- you will improve. You will make stuff that you are proud of. In this moment of generated content and soulless slop, the world needs your words more than ever. Write your heart onto that page.

Do so, and remember to give self doubt the middle finger. Because one day you will look back and realize that you’d spent your time doing one of the most fundamentally human things that any of us can do:

Telling stories.

AGGRO is 50,000 words, and was written entirely during the month of November (as was the style at the time). It doesn't have much of a conclusion. It might as well be fanfiction of Sword Art Online, for all that I’d put in work to design an original MMORPG world for the characters to be stuck in while the plot happens. It's the story of a digital game master, struggling to protect thousands of people who are locked into a virtual reality world by a hacker.

My first novel is quite interesting for me to read now. I had some annoying habits like starting a piece of dialogue with one character, and then having a separate character finish the line as if the two were psychic twins or something. I somehow thought it would be a good idea to give my main character waist-length platinum blonde hair (even done ironically, this was funny for me to read later). The plot is like the intersection of a disaster film and a love triangle, and I hadn't yet learned that it was alright to use all of my vocabulary when writing fiction.

(Behold! Some of my earliest unpublished writing. It's not good.)

But I can still see the seeds of the writer I would become in those pages. It's not *badly written* (or at least, not very), for all that it is derivative and not at all a great story. It has sentences and grammar and stuff. I was twenty-six that November, and had spent the better part of my free time reading since the age of eight. I knew what a good novel should look like... I just didn't know how to get there yet.

In contrast, the little red book next to that stack of paper is my very own, leather-bound copy of REVERSAL (thanks to @bardicc-inspo, who did a marvelous job on the binding). It is 55,610 words, took me one and a half months to write, and is a better book in every single respect.

Genuinely, Mareth did such a good job on binding this thing for me -- I'm so incredibly glad I commissioned them for this! <3

Turns out, fourteen years of practice makes a huge difference when you're an artist -- shocker, I know! This is true for any kind of creative pursuit, btw. I'm sure if I asked any one of my more visually artistic mutuals to compare their earliest drawings to their later work, they would be forced to admit that they can see a difference. Progress is not always linear; it is almost never *fast*. But would AGGRO have inspired fanart?

I think not.

(Thanks so much to @atticastagrr, @dogerbooger and @sicklecellvamp for permission to include their priceless artwork in my very own copy of the book <3)

I guess the reason I wanted to write this post is to encourage anyone who may be walking this long and sometimes lonely path with me. I'm nearly 40 now -- I get the feeling that I might be a little older than some (not all!) of the people I share this fandom space with. I want you to remember that it is never too late to practice your art. Never too late to start something new. Never, NEVER too late to share your passion for something with other people.

After writing AGGRO, I participated in an additional four NaNoWriMos. I wrote a bunch of one-shots. I won a competition for a collection of 30 drabbles, and then seriously tried to publish an original work of 65K words -- a novel that was both too short and *way* too dark for a trad publisher to touch with a ten foot pole. After that "failure" I just... stopped writing.

For four years.

The reason I started again -- the reason I rediscovered my love for this craft -- is largely the encouragement and positive feedback I've gotten from all of you. I didn't start writing fanfic until I was 39 years old. It's been both an adventure and an education, and one that I'm very glad I *allowed myself* to try. Thanks to all of you, I now know one thing for certain:

I

*can*

write.

Which means that you can, too.

Keep writing, keep drawing, keep practicing your craft and I *promise* you -- whatever level you are at right now -- you will improve. You will make stuff that you are proud of. In this moment of generated content and soulless slop, the world needs your words more than ever. Write your heart onto that page.

Do so, and remember to give self doubt the middle finger. Because one day you will look back and realize that you’d spent your time doing one of the most fundamentally human things that any of us can do:

Telling stories.