Contest Entries

A Loss on Writing Until...

What if WDC didn't exist? Where would I write? First of all, I wouldn't have a writing website to go to upon a suggestion of a friend of mine. It just wouldn't have happened. I'd still be playing video games and drawing all the time. But, there would be one catch that might get me started on writing. Meeting someone who knows about Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month and telling me about it. Then that would get me started in writing novels. Will I succeed? Probably not right away. But I would try anyway. I wouldn't have any direction on how to write the novel. I would be blind at it. Thus the journey of an artist who would have little findings in writing.

Most of my writings come from school. Classes that were required to take. I spend little time writing otherwise. Then a friend of mine came who knew writing. Of course, I supported her. But my level of writing was at the very basic. I had done no writing outside of school. I did my school work and gone to the library. Watched movies and read books. I did graduate and then met someone who knew of National Novel Writing Month. So I might have decided to give that a try.

I would find myself researching how to write a novel. Not knowing the details of plot, character, and elements of a novel. I would be all alone to do this. In my home. Then there was the move to Wyoming where I enrolled in College. It was the perfect degree in my interest. And there was more writing involved. But now I would be starting my first attempt of writing at home: a novel. I would use Google to find out how to prepare and then write an outline. I might not time the outline well enough, but it'd be a start. World building would also be a part of my process. My novel might not have a true villain to start out with. All of this I would do at home. Then November would come and I would write. Among homework and studying for exams, I would hit the daily goal. Towards the end of the month I'd have a finished novel. Would it be long enough? Maybe not in time. Or it maybe poorly planned and came up too short. Still, that would be my first attempt at it. My first writing at home that's not school related.

The second year would come and I would do my planning in October. Using what I researched online, I would come up with a better outline. I spent my time playing video games and drawing the rest of the time. I would also be focused on my harder classes. I balanced my schedule out with easy classes and hard classes. This was the time I spent learning how to write for newspapers. I did okay and my articles were good enough. Editing made them better. Then came November again and the writing began. This time I would have a super long outline to go by and worked on it whenever I wasn't working on school work. I made good progress and excelled the 50,000 words long mark. But ended before the 100,000 words long mark. Good progress. I now know that it would be possible to achieve. I became an overachiever and I passed my classes too.

After college I moved back to Nebraska. I enrolled in Game Designing and had a blast learning about creating a game. I also gained a job. Then came October again. Once more, I planned out a detailed outline. November came, I wrote. I put school first, of course, then wrote. I found it easy to just follow the outline I created. I may have a villain and a protagonist this time too. And a plot to follow. My first novel may lack a clear plot to follow. Fantasy would be my preferred genre. Filled with mythical creatures. Dragons especially. There maybe creatures I made up. Hybrids are a great example of what might appear. It matched my drawings. I made this attempt at 100,000 words. My very best. But that might be my top record of all time too. I would be satisfied at that level.

The school was costly, so I stopped. But the knowledge I didn't want to lose. Then I tried Accounting. It was okay. But stopped. National Novel Writing Month I didn't stop doing, though. I did artwork the rest of the time. I submitted to a publisher and got a rejection. I tried again and again until I got an acceptance. Even better would be if I got an agent and went for a larger company. This would be where I'd be if WDC didn't exist. My struggles would be apparent. I'm not the best editor either. I could make the book good, but it would take someone else to make the novel great.

My journey to writing would be a lot harder and more difficult. The novels would be of lower quality. I would not know spelling and grammar like I do now. The class I took for newspapers helped tremendously and wasn't forgotten. I believe I do have potential to make a difference if I didn't have to live under so many rules. There were the editing weakness in that my work wasn't polished to its potential. Just rusty with collecting dust from not being edited and worked on. I spent too much time with drawing. And my new hobby of creating video game ideas. There would be a limit of how much I could create and design. I would need to find a job in the field and my programming skills was poor. Just the basics. There would be things I would be in constant need of learning and improving to improve my first drafts of my novels. It could not beat the best writers, but it could inspire others into finding the joy of reading by those who don't care about grammar too much.

Prompt: What if WDC didn't exist? Where would you write?
Word Count: 1,019
Contest: "What if...? (Closed)"