Writing, Fandoms, Shipping...

I have never regretted any stories I have ever written down.

I mean obviously you don’t regret the fics that do well, that people like, but please believe me when I say that I can go back and get the same sense of joy, of satisfaction, of damn fandom should have appreciated this more for fics that only ever got 150 notes. I certainly do not regret writing them.

I wrote a novel a few years ago that took months of my life, only for me to re-read it at the end and think “you know, this isn’t actually that good.” but never for a second do I regret having written it. (And really, I should go back and give it another try at some point, I was probably being too hard on myself).

I do not regret the MULTITUDES of fics that are sitting in my google drive, abandoned because I decided they weren’t quite good enough to post or because I lost steam halfway through. I still do not regret them. I like re-reading them periodically.

I do not regret the fics I wrote when I was like 14 or 15 (for context, im 30 now). Looking back, I can no longer say they are my best work, but I can see the seeds of the writer I would become. And, though the form and style are simplistic (compared to what I can do now), the story is still exactly what I wanted it to be. 

I recently cleaned out my childhood bedroom and found notebooks and notebooks filled with fantasy stories I wrote when I was in middle school. And, you know what, I sat and skimmed through them and in reading some of them, memories of what was going to happen came back and god, they were terrible, so bad, so many spelling errors, the most flat, stereotypical characters, but I do not regret them. I am slightly embarrassed by them, I would not let others read them, but I sat there reading with a smile on my face because I wrote them down and they are my stories. 

All this to say, honestly, you will not regret writing your stories.

But you know what I do regret? I regret all the stories I never wrote down. I regret that feeling when I know I had an idea and I daydreamed it for months and I just never bothered to write it down. I regret a half-finished WIP where I know I knew the ending but just didn’t get to it. I regret, now, looking back at this past year and know that I fell off writing a little bit. I regret not writing more. Because I love writing. And more importantly, I freaking love reading what I wrote. 

I love when all the characters act exactly as you want them to act and the story goes where you want it to go and I love when you’ve actually forgotten a line or a scene and you go back and you’re like “DAMN THATS GOOD” and even if it’s not good, if it’s the story you wrote when you were 7 about three dogs named Freddie, Teddie, and Eddie who fought a villain whose name was LITERALLY Mr. Mean, you will still love it. 

So, please, PLEASE: Write your story.

Fire sign bathroom:

And lest there be any remaining doubt.. remember the blue pill? The pill Neo could have taken to forget the truth, bury his troubles and go back to living a normal life, without fearing a system that wanted to destroy him? The pill that was easy, perhaps cowardly according to some, but comfortable? Here’s Prozac.