You know, when I origionally created this blog I did it for several reasons. The first was simply curiousity. I don't really have all that much interest in 'putting myself out there' in the world. Nor do I really have the time, the inclination, or the idea of how to create a successful blog viewed by thousands of people.

It's a good thing too, since to date this blog has not been viewed by a single person other than me. Not one! Not that I'm upset or anything. Probably more relieved, actually.

The second reason I did it was to try to soften up my writing, which to me feels very stiff and unfriendly. Vanilla. Uninspired. Boring. I find that oftentimes when I'm imagining something in my head, there is a lot more flourish and flavor to my thinking which simply doesn't translate to what makes it past the keyboard. It's my hands, really. They are just too damned plain and dull and disinterested in anything other than switching letters around and making me look illiterate.

Did I mention that no one ever looks at this thing?

There were, however, a few things that I did NOT want this blog to be. I didn't want it to be about WOW, or any specific thing really (despite the name). I also didn't really want it to be a personal, online diary about my life (though my sister just had twins, yay!). I just wanted to do it to write about things I wanted, when I wanted to write them, and damned any internal consistancy. This was more of a practice for me than anything.

Yet lately I've really been having the itch to write something serious again. Something that hasn't happened in years. I'm getting bored again in life, I know, and writing is an outlet for me that I rarely take advantage of anymore.

I have a confession to make (ahem!). At one point in my life I wanted to be a professional writer. Now, even back then I didn't really think I had the chops for it. I'm very hard on myself, especially on my writing. And I know I'm not very good at it.

I need practice. Serious practice, not just on writing itself, but on HOW to write; how to make a sentence or paragraph not only readable, but fun to read. Because often that is what is missing in my rather stiff writing...the fun!

A long time ago (has it really been ten years now?), I made an attempt at writing a book. I think it was a rather good attempt at the time, but in hindsight the book simply doesn't work even if I still like the concept even to this day. It had all of the elements I was interested in. Travel to other worlds. The clashing of diffent cultures. Mysterious characters with questionable more objectives. And a real sense by the end of the book of having to question who was was the good guys, and who were the real bad guys.

By the time I was done with it, there was no real resolution to the plot (the book was intended to be part 1 of 2). And the story itself deviated from my origional outline about half way through. I really did start writing itself, something I've heard happens to other writers, and experiencing it myself really made me feel excited at the time. But, because of that there were also quite a few inconsistancies that cropped up in the story. Including main characters and plots that never intersected. Characters living that were supposed to die. Others dying that were supposed to live. A major plot change which added like 10 chapters to the book and completely changed the ending. And a major betrayal at the end which seemed to perfectly fit where the story was going; but hadn't origionally been planned for and left me completely stumped on how to continue it to the second book.

If I restarted that today, I know I'd go about it in a different way. But, do I really want to? I mean, I want to write again. But where, and in what format. And how do I deal with the fact that in 10 years, my writing style has actually declined since then, not improved like I would have wanted? Not to mention the fact that, do I really have time to do something like that again right now? That one story took me an entire summer to write (4 months, often spending at least 8 hours each day on it).

Maybe I'd do better writing something entirely different? I have a few ideas, some of them more fleshed out than others. And I've been spending a lot of time lately designing a world-setting for a character concept I had...but while I like the premise (future humanity / post holocaust, mad max + blade runner + star trek style setting)...but what do I really want to do?

And that's the problem. I really don't know.