My Journey With Writing · 6:40am Mar 30th, 2023
Lovely peeps, welcome to my 50th blog!
For this milestone, I’ve decided to open up about my journey with creative writing and how I got into the world of horsewords.
Seven years ago, in 2016, I was in a bookstore, scrolling the shelves, when suddenly I came across something magnificent. A book called Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. I gingerly scrolled through its pages, feeling the book and taking in that sweet new-page scent. 14-year old me thought I was looking at magic.
My parents bought the book immediately. And that, lovely peeps, is where our story begins.
As expected, I loved the book. It was my first time reading a novel and I failed to realize it was part of a series. I brought the book with me everywhere I went, finishing it in the span of two weeks. Then I craved for more. So went back to the bookstore, and, in early 2017, I got the sequel - Shopaholic to the Stars!
When it comes to movies, I hate rom-coms. I think they’re cheesy and overdone and unrealistic. But when it comes to books, romantic comedy is my #1 favorite genre. Sophie Kinsella’s writing appealed to me so much. I had only read two books of hers at this point, but I was in love.
So naturally I decided the best thing to do would be to emulate her. In 2017 - I cannot, for the life of me, remember what month - I embarked on a project - write a story. I titled it Sadness be Healed.
Behold, Uz Naimat’s first attempt at creative writing!
Before you go and click on that link, I need to warn you of its contents. No, it’s not graphic or violent. It is, however, very bad. Spelling errors, wrong grammar, bad paragraphing, awful pacing, bland characters, a non-existent conflict. Whatever problem you can possibly imagine in a story, Sadness be Healed has got it.
This is not an exaggeration. I was re-reading the story for the sake of this blog and I’ve internally cringed at least a hundred times. I cannot believe that 15-year old me thought this was good. In addition to the general writing problems in the story, there’s also a huge lack of understanding about serious issues like school shootings, PTSD, therapy, unemployment and the like. Apparently, my younger self thought she was equipped enough to talk about these things.
I invite you, lovely peeps, to read the Google Doc and make a comment, as it is open to comments. I want to hear your thoughts.
After my first attempt at fiction writing, and my failure to realize it was actually terrible, I discovered the wondrous world of FimFiction, also in 2017. As I mentioned in my first blog, I wrote not one, but two, fics on this site all the way back in 2017. They were both awful, received nothing but negative backlash and I eventually deleted them both. The receipts:
So I stopped writing. I did keep on reading, though. My Sophie Kinsella collection continued to grow - two books becoming nine in the span of four years. I also kept on reading fanfiction, but something weird happened with my account where I logged off and was unable to log back in. So from 2017 to 2020, I read without upvoting, commenting or bookshelving anything.
My love of literature expanded beyond rom-coms. I delved into classic literature, having adored The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Oliver Twist and Animal Farm. (Although I quickly realized that Jane Austen wasn’t my style when I picked up Pride & Prejudice and couldn’t read more than two pages.) Roald Dahl soon entered my list, becoming my favorite children’s author. I bought a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sometime in 2018, before discovering that my school library had the entire Dahl collection and fangirling like crazy. Among my favorite works of his include Matilda, The BFG, Boy and Going Solo.
Then COVID happened. On March 18th, 2020, my country went into lockdown. That’s where I really dove into pony fanfiction. Eventually, I got my Pa to reset my account and I was finally able to log back on. I got back to reading and this time, I was able to access all the features of FimFic users.
On May 19th, 2020, I wrote and published my first real story on the site. It was received very positively, breaking half a thousand views within a month. It now stands at 1.8k views and 78 upvotes and was, as at September 19th, 2023, my only story with over 1k views and 50 upvotes.
From there on out, I kept on writing, occasionally publishing a fic and being met with generally positive feedback. 2 fics in 2020, 1 in 2021, 2 in 2022 and, so far, 1 this year. I still think writing is hard, but I love it. Challenging, but rewarding. I’ve come a long way from Sadnesss be Healed.
It was around that time that I expanded my horizons to blog writing, publishing my first blog five days before my first story. Back when I first started, I published blogs very often - two, sometimes three, times within the same week. And, obviously, I did not know how to blog at first. But I learned. I got better. My most popular blog is ‘Growing up with hypersensitivity’, which alone has 211 views (which is insane for a blog of mine.) I got more personal, too. ’Let’s talk about my mother’ with 109 views, ’Knowing when to quit’ with 51 views and ’It’s been a hard time’ with 52 views.
Critical analysis also became important. In the beginning, I wrote very short blogs about things on the show. But then, I got deep. The history of the Tree of Harmony and my ’A Deep Dive Into Twilight’s Character’ series nearing the 700-view mark, which is personally mind-blowing.
Today, I stand at over 100 followers and more than 10 good stories under my belt. And the reason I made this blog is because I’m leading up an exciting announcement! Ready?
I’m printing out a compilation of my first stories. I have no intention of actually publishing (unless some of ya’ll might be interested in buying it) but I do wanna print the stories out. Just to feel this sense of accomplishment. Here’s a sneak peak of what it looks like so far.
I’m naming it The First of Many - A Collection of Ten Fanfics.
I know this blog has been long and is pepper-sprayed with links and images, but I hope you had fun following along my journey. A big thank you to everyone who has supported me and been with me throughout this beautiful road. I can’t wait to see where I’ll go next.
Cheers to more horsewords!
