100th post: Writing was my first love

I can't believe it, but this is my 100th post on this blog. It seeems so much because I honestly remember every single one of them really well. So, for this post anniversary, I want to write a bit about my first big love in life, which was writing. Writing has been an important part of my life for as long as I know how to write. Here's how it all began and how I got were I am today.

As soon as I learned how to write, I already wrote short stories. They were cute, but ridicolous, childish stories. I am pretty sure that my very first story was called "The monster in the alley" and that in end the moster of course collapsed into a million pieces.

When I was ten, we wrote short stories in school. I remember that one time we had to continue a story where the first sentence was given to us by the teacher. I wrote an awesome story about a dystopian society, a prison, a radical group of fighters and a man who once belonged to them and now challenged their leader to fight for death. My teacher love it. Little did he know that I stole it from the movie "Postman". Usually I didn't steal my stories, but they were greatly influenced by the books I read and the movies I watched.

When I was eleven, we learned how to write newspaper articles in school. It was so much fun and my teacher even told my Mum that I was talented and should become a journalist. Ever since then journalism was my one aim in life. I thought I new excactly what I wanted to do and I did everything to get closer to this, including numerous internships at newspapers and magazines and later freelance work.

From then on all I wrote where articles. As a teenager about celebrities and fashion and movies and books. Later about politics and society. To write fiction or other literary texts didn't even cross my mind. I even read very little.

Only around eight years later, when I was 19 and had taken a semester off my studies, did I once again start writing fiction. I decided to write a story for my friend, a hymn to our friendship, but also a love story with a tiny bit of fantasy. After that I now and then wrote several other stories, during my semester off, during my semester abroad in the US and when I was back at my studies.

I have a weird relationship to writing. On one hand I absolutely love it, it's my way of expressing my creativity and it's pretty much vital for me. I write every day, sometimes in my diary, sometimes blogposts, sometimes fiction. Writing is my outlet and in many ways I would go crazy without it.

On the other hand I don't really enjoy the process of writing. Actually, while I'm writing, especially when I'm writing fiction, I suffer, I feel like I just put down useless words on a page. But what I do enjoy (a lot!) is to read what I have written. Usually it turns out not as bad as I thought while writing it. I love having written something, seeing my words on the screen or on the paper. It's one of the most satisfying feelings I now. I also like revising and observing how my text becomes better.

One year ago, in fall 2015, when I was 24, I found an old exposé on my computer, a High School story, and I thought to myself, this is actually pretty interesting, I should work on this. Just then my university offered a class called Work in Progress where you work on a novel, so I took it. I started writing a youth novel which was loosly based on my old exposé, but I changed a lot, made the center of the story something different, changed the plot, and cut out tons of characters. In the writing class I presented my texts and got feedback from my peers and my teacher. I was so nervous but in the end my writing improved a lot through it and it helped me so much to share my writing with others. Even more now did I believe in my story and wanted to continue, hoping that one day it might turn into a book.

I am still working on this book now. I am five chapters in. I have again and again modified the plot but I still believe in the story. My university doesn't offer the writing class anymore, so I have started my own writing group with some other students, and every other week we meet and read out our texts to each other and give feedback. It's fun and most of all it's extremely motivating. My writing has changed a lot. I don't write whatever comes to my mind anymore, but I follow a plan and I try to uphold my writing voice which I have painfully discovered or rather created over the last year. I like working on one big project, writing a novel, and I love sharing my work. For me sharing my work is what really makes it worthwile.

As my blog was born out of this passion for writing too, and in honor of NaNoWriMo, I hope my story inspires you to pusue your passion, whatever it may be. When I was younger, all I wanted was a job where I write, but now I don't even care anymore. I just want to write in my freetime, at best every single day.