Friday, February 7, 2014

The other day I was thinking about why I started writing with (a small amount of) seriousness. I've always thought that the idea of writing, or being a writer, was appealing, but I never did anything about, aside from writing out a few bad sci-fi stories long hand when I was in grade school. (Part of me wishes I still had those, but most of me is really, really glad.) So anyway, I was thinking about it, which I haven't done in a while, or ever really. And surprisingly, I found that I can actually trace it back through a very clear series of events. 

Some would be embarrassed by what indirectly kindled my desire to write. I'm not. It started with the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS in internet nerd speak). I am a child of the 90s, but I didn't actually watch the show until a couple of years ago on Netflix. I thought I would give it a spin, and holy wow...I loved it. Great writing, campy vampire action, super 90s...it's pretty much had everything I ever wanted in a TV show. So anyway, that led me down the rabbit hole of nerd culture that I'd neglected for a long time. I also learned that BtVS continued in comic form after season 7. So naturally I had to go read all of them. And that lead me back into comic book reading. 

I also started following more nerd culture type blogs and web channels. One was Geek & Sundry on youtube, which is awesome, and everybody should check out. Felicia Day had a show and talked about a lot of different stuff. One of the things she mentioned on a show was a website called Fan Write Friday where somebody would put up a prompt for a comic script and people would submit short comic stories for members of the group to review. And I thought, "I can do that."

So I started writing short scripts every week. From there I moved on to comic miniseries type projects and short prose stories. So that is in a nutshell why I decided to start writing. It's been fun, and it's incredibly fulfilling. It also drives me nuts a lot of the time, but that's OK.