The Evolution of Writing

When I was younger, I tried to write a lot. I started roleplaying when I was twelve, and I hardly knew what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to write stories. And so I did. Granted, they were not in my own universe. But I still wrote. And now I've been doing that for eight years! It's strange see the evolution of my writing. I'm the type to be swaying by authors I enjoy. I was guilty of purple prose. Perhaps not to the degree I've seen, but without looking back at my own writing (thankfully not many of those early posts are around).

Agh I just found some from 2003. I thought about posting snippets to actually SHOW how I've changed, but it's too painful for me to read. At least by this point I was capitalizing my "I"s. But oh my gosh I was like everything I currently hate in a roleplayer. Well, maybe not everything. But a lot of things. (All of my characters, especially NPCs, had really terrible names)

My writing tended to be clunky. It tried too hard to be what it was, and, granted, I was just trying to be a better writer. I learned from reading and from not wanting to suck in face of a lot of other writers on the various role-plays I participated in. Granted, the evidence says I still sucked. And maybe I still do, I'm not sure.

But I'm learning that less is more. Flowery language works sometimes, but I find that you don't always need it. I found this especially true in reading my the essays of my classmates! Not to put any of them down, but for some..it was painfully obvious that they're trying too hard. Micah and I were simpatico, I think, which helped grandly. I still felt bad for giving an honest critique. But there was no real poetry, no real feeling, in that essay. It felt empty and pretentious like the man who studies the thesaurus to impress his 'smart' friends, but doesn't know what any of the words are, and so no one understands him. 

Or maybe I'm just reading too much Ted Dekker. I feel like my writing has slanted in his style lately. I actually found this when I wrote a (don't laugh) fanfiction this month. Yes, I wrote a fanfiction. I never write them, simply because I never like the stories I come up with enough to put them out, or I don't feel like I can convincingly write the characters. But this time, I did. So I wrote. And I like the end product, and apparently a lot of other people did, too. Encouraging.

Gray or Blue

I'll put the link there, but you know. If you don't know much about NCIS you aren't going to find it interesting, I don't think. I feel like a Class A dork for writing it, but eh. Don't care. I've always been that kid, so why stop?

I think my writing has become a little less about describing everything and more..internalized. Even in narrative, it's more like I'm writing the character's thoughts and questions and reactions that merely detailing the blueberries on the muffin, and how the sit in the muffin and the color that they taint the muffin with. That all well and good, since everyone likes muffins, but writing like that all the time turns into fluff and purple prose that never says anything. I'd rather make an impact in few words that give someone ten lines of ultimately pointless descriptions. My policy has always been to write how much I feel I need to write. Never write more than you need to for the sake of length. Anyway, here's a bit of something I wrote for roleplay yesterday.

Rain turned into mud. A miracle of nature to behold. Daniela was tired. It had been enough traveling from the coast of Florida up through the states, up to Illinois. She had driven her car until it couldn't be driven. Then she biked until it couldn't be ridden. And now she would walk until her feet gave way and crumbled like worn plaster.

She'd tucked away anger and turned it into determination. Her family was gone, she knew. She knew that. Her hand brushed her dark, matted curls off of her dirty face. Raindrops dribbled from her brow into her eyes and from her chin to her chest. She was just glad her duffel bag was of waterproof canvas. It was a small blessing jammed into the nooks and crannies of an existence that had been characterized by avoiding people like the plague and running for cover when strange ships zipped overhead. Sleeping in dead cars and picking out the healthiest foods she could find in dilapidated, unsanitary gas stations. Sometimes they had people in them. Sometimes there were dirty and scared and ran, other times they tried to take advantage of her, and sometimes they had guns that looked like flashlights and Daniela would run with burning lungs that wouldn't let her catch her breath. Sometimes she chose to fight, but most times she just ran.

And now she was in Chicago, where the burdened clouds dropped their heaviness. Mud wasn't around as Daniela got further in. The buildings she knew must have been grand once. Their gleaming windows were duller than they should have been, even under the deluge. Broken in places. Mostly broken, in fact. God, all Daniela wanted was a place of relative safety to stay. Sure there would be someone, something here..

Her toes were wet and chilled. Why did she ever leave the sunny warmth of Florida? She wasn't made for the cold. Daniela pulled her damp cardigan a little closed to her body and only felt colder.