SoC/HDIA: Writing

Someone asked me a couple of days ago what my writing style was. Caveat: This was a completely innocent question with no malice or a judgmental tone. It was stated rather neutrally, albeit still a question.

I honestly didn’t know what to say and I kinda said nonsense until they asked a second clarifying question. They asked me, “So do you just sit down and write everything at once?"

And I immediately realized that they were talking about this blog. I know this person reads this blog because they had casually asked it if I was all right after posting a BTWC post. (In case you were wondering why my last post had all those disclaimers that I really don’t drink outside of those posts and I’m not an alcoholic and I drink in my bathtub safely, it’s because some of my coworkers discovered my blog, and don’t know me well enough to not be concerned... still super nice that they were concerned tho! But I digress)

So this blog is kind of interesting to me. I want to be an author and for some reason casual stream of consciousness stuff isn’t really cool unless you’re writing about dark thoughts or whatever. Generally, blogging is looked down upon by “serious writers” and with frustration by anyone trying to get a recipe without a 40 page monologue about autumn and pumpkin picking beforehand. (I've been hurt before)

To get this recipe: Read an add-filled post about a random lady's walk through the woods with her family and scroll down for 15 minutes.

I’m a nerd too. I’m getting my Masters and so a lot of my writing is professional and scholarly. (Probably couldn't tell with this blog but I swear I'm smart, guys!). Outside of trying to understand APA with my MLA background, I’ve been doing well with all my papers in my courses. 

In my undergrad, my professor told me that one of my papers could be submitted to a scholarly journal after I worked on it a little bit longer and cleaned it up. I turned her down: 1) Because extra work outside of a class was a crazy thought my freshman year and 2) because i was hopelessly mentally-crippled by the thought I could try really hard at something and still fail. I’m working on this second thing- see my post on bravery but yeah. I can write scholarly and it’s fun in one way but also not what people want to read???

As mentioned like two paragraphs above, I want to be an author. I have technically published a book before through my college but it was an anthology of works by the homeless and I just wrote the forward and compiled it. Intrigued? It's here.

I don’t want to limit my achievements because that’s a really cool thing to have done, but seeing as the majority of pages were written by someone else, it doesn’t feel as fulfilling. I have the plot line for a children’s book series fleshed out and halfway written (anyone who wants to draw for it, lemme know!) and I have the majority of the plot and characters for a fantasy/paranormal/sci-fi novel doped out. I even have this fancy software to help me write. I’m just struggling making time to do so with my workload right now, even though I’m spending money every month on software 

When you have like 3 links to other things you've done- the self-promoting game is realllll

So between professional writing and my actual “serious” writing, my blog is a bit of a letdown for me style-wise and a smidge embarrassing? When that person asked me about my writing style and process (again, very neutrally because they also like writing and wanted to talk about it), I immediately thought that I had to defend myself. Like “my blog is silly and stream of consciousness and not serious and don’t judge me by this style!!!”induced panic.Which is stupid??? 

I LOVE sharing memes, which are grammatical trash. And people know you can understand memes and still know how to talk outside of a Spongebob joke.

This blog operates the same way. It lets me BS and joke and let off steam and such, which isn’t embarrassing. I mean- I tend to use my stream of consciousness posts like a diary which is fine and dandy but I also post them on the internet tied to my name and face so that’s cool and the beginning of nightmares but I’m chill.

I had a “professional” blog before. Sleek lines, carefully selected photos, “higher” quality content that was carefully curated. But that was a lot of work. And it felt more clinical. This feels more like me and it’s fun to do. The other blog was to “get noticed” and be a billionaire amazing journalist or whatever. 

This is for me- and anyone who somehow is still reading. (This means YOU! Thanks for putting up with this). It de-stresses me and lets me celebrate my little publishing victories while I work on my behemoth projects. It lets me shout into the void (because most people only comment to me in person and I forget most of those interactions tbh so it’s like no one reads this except my friend Ryan who is dying for a shoutout so there you go bud). And so this blog is nothing to be embarrassed of.

Sooooo to answer the questions: What’s your writing style? What’s your writing process?

I can say this: I have a couple different ones. I have a casual stream of consciousness blog that I just sit down and write. Sometimes I plan articles and write half of it and come back to it, but most of the time it’s one-shot writing and editing a bit later. Sometimes that’s due to being tipsy- I have a section where I drink about half a bottle of wine in the bathtub and review it, so you can kind of see the content there.

I’m in school so I write a lot of academic papers for that, which I tend to also write in large chunks. I get the section headers decided, research like a crazy person, and write that often all in one-shot when I have the information compiled. I wrote a 22 page paper the other day in like 14 hours. It was a horrible day but I got it done! I had researched for a few days beforehand so I could just write with breaks added in.

Novel wise- I’m still in the outlining phase but I flutter around. I’m trying to get a standard schedule to write but work is crazzzyyyyy right now.

Rereading that- my explanation of my writing style seems just as long as my explanation of why I think I’m embarrassed a bit of my blog style. There's just no gifs to break it up. (Should I add gifs? Nah, I think it's fine). It’s funny how my mindset has changed in just a few paragraphs. 

This is an odd post because it’s both a HDIA answer and a stream of consciousness. Oh no- the lines of this blog are blurring even more. What will the neighbors (and Ryan!) think?!?!

But seriously. Thanks for reading my inner monologue about my thoughts about this blog. Let me know if you have questions you want me to answer or ideas for my next post!

<3 Katie

P.S. I wrote this on my phone at like midnight. 40 mins of writing or whatever for this. You’re welcome.

P.P.S. Ryan, you're going to actually get a story about you on this blog and not just a x3 shoutout but you WILL HAVE TO WAIT