Why did I do this?
Great question blog header, why did I do this? Why a public facing website, with the professional photographs (taken by the incredibly talented tales_of_taytay), and the stories? It's a solid question and thank you for asking.
For years I’ve felt creativity without having a direction to point it in. I’ve tried many different things without really following through. Writing was something I did as a kid, and I remember really enjoying it, but at some stage it just fell away. The same happened with reading, as a kid I was reading up a storm. After reading the 3rd Harry Potter book at age 13 and then watching the film, I decided that it was a better use of my time to watch the movie; the book was much better but it only took one and half hours to watch instead of read. From that point on I didn’t pick up a book (outside of those against my will) for over a decade, until I found myself on a bus for an hour a day. I was a massive fan of Mass Effect game, and found the prequel novel Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn. I was once again transported to that place in my mind where the words on the page conjured fascinating imagery. Shortly after, on my honeymoon, I made the snap decision to buy a book at an airport before a 9 hour plane ride to Thailand. That book was Dead or Alive, a Tom Clancy novel written by Grant Blackwood. Apparently in my early 20’s I was rapidly approaching the tastes of a middle aged dad, and from there I started reading again. This leads me to the last couple of years, with prompting from a dear friend I entered a 55 hour, 500 word, flash fiction competition. To date I still haven’t placed in the top 25 list from the 1000+ entries, but I have been able to see a gradual and steady improvement in most elements of my writing. I joined a critiquing community which has also helped immensely, and I’ve devoured 17 years worth of the ‘Writing Excuses’ podcast since the start of 2022 which has opened my eyes to a world of possibilities. Side note, if you’re even remotely interested in writing, I can’t recommend that podcast enough.
All this is leading me to my main point. I want to be a writer, and I am a writer. The real reason I created this website was to showcase the work I am proud of. I’m sure in 2 years time I'll look at those first few stories I uploaded and want to delete them out of shame, but right now I think they’re pretty good. The other side to this, it costs money to buy a domain name, and using SquareSpace also costs money. In view of sunk costs, I'm in the red now so I should probably do the thing I set out to do.
So here I am, showing you the words that I’ve had in my head. The dumb ideas that made me laugh, and the cool stories I’ve wanted to tell without understanding what medium I can unleash the creativity that has wanted to escape for so long. My hope is that at some stage you do one of those laughs where you breath out your nose because laughing when you’re alone makes you look a little insane.
Take care of yourself and your friends.