#ask m

My question for you: do you ever experience “fear of the blank page” while writing? Has it evolved at all over your writing career? And how do you respond to that feeling?

Such a great question!

I definitely experience the fear of the blank page a bit. That first sentence never really gets any less daunting as time goes on. The thing is, I learned that usually you don't end up writing the final first sentence of anything on your first try.

No matter how many WIPs I go through, whether I finish or abandon them, I always end up writing something from the middle of them first because I'm trying to capture their direction and point as quickly as I can. But even if you start in the middle, it can be intimidating to start at all.

I guess my main response to that feeling is to just write down some bullshit and tell myself that I'm not going to use it for anything. That way, when I come back to it later, I'm coming at it surprised to find things worth using, rather than disappointed that not all of it is usable. Once you accept that your first attempt at any story is going to more or less be for your eyes and your eyes alone, you realize that you really can start anywhere and write anything down.

It gets easier when you take away the finality of deciding it's something before it even exists. Make it and then decide if it's something or not!

I don't really have an exact answer to this question.

🥹Awhhh, thank you Nonny, that's so sweet of you to come here and say!!! I'm sorry about the guest commenting, but the spam without that setting was getting out of hand, I miss all my regular guests. :,(

I personally read a lot of translated webnovels which gave me the "double negatives" curse. It's everywhere in my draft rip

Honestly my reading style is all over the place, which is probably reflected in my writing lol. For the past few years I've read a lot of medieval/early modern texts so that's definitely bled into my fantasy a little bit. I have been reading a lot of Chekov lately. I wouldn't be the first person to copy his pacing and form, that's for sure.

I think in general I learn so much from what I read, it's hard to pinpoint exact influences on my writing. I do draw on a lot of non-literature texts for my writing, though, which might be a little unconventional. I study architecture a bit, so academic writing tends to bleed into my work (which happens to be okay for my specific WIP but in general I wouldn't advise people draw writing inspiration from academic journals, lol).

Personally I always hate going through and trying to pick out the points where I forgot to capitalize something that should be capitalized. But I love outlining.

I love this question!

Thanks! Luckily, food poisoning isn't forever.

So, funny story -- I sort of didn't decide on it as a major? Let me explain:

When I transferred schools, I was deciding between History and English (Creative Writing track) as my major but I put down English on the application. When signed up for classes, I wanted to switch it to History but my advisor (chair of the english department) convinced me to keep English as my major for the first semester.

Well, many semesters later and I'm graduating. I never changed it because my advisor was right and I really loved my English courses.

The reason that I initially hesitated about majoring in Creative Writing is that I wasn't sure I'd learn anything that I couldn't reasonably teach myself. But it's really hard to teach yourself what you don't know that you don't know.

I'm also the most annoying English major of all time so I could drone on and on about why English and Creative Writing are fantastic things to study. Genuinely, I think that my degree has been the most enriching experience of my life. I've become a much better writer and reader because of it and I've really gotten a lot out of it.

At the same time, I also know people who don't really care about the major and are graduating pretty much unchanged by the experience. So, it's not really the degree, it's how you relate to it. If you wholeheartedly throw yourself into writing and learning, that experience will be worthwhile (but definitely demanding).

If you can, I'd recommend getting involved in some kind of Creative Writing workshop (whether that's a college class or just a local writers group) to get a feel of whether you enjoy working alongside other writers in that context, since most creative writing degrees are structured around workshop courses.

I'm not sure if I really answered your question effectively so definitely feel free to send a follow-up ask if you want! Good luck and happy writing (especially if you decide to pursue that degree)!