Being true to myself
I finished an earlier piece by asking:
if I’m not true to my own nature when writing then what is the point?
This is the tale of the time when I wasn’t true to myself when writing a story. I’ve written about the competition run by a discord server which I only managed to enter twice. The first time I wrote an experimental piece, set in second person with hints of magical realism (a genre I enjoy greatly). It received mixed responses: one positive, others less so, and there was definitely some confusion about the events portrayed. I loved writing that story and consider it to be one of my strongest; I’m certainly going to write in this style a lot more in future.
It will come as no surprise that the story didn’t trouble the judges, which did not bother me in the slightest since the concept of competitive writing isn’t important to me. I enjoy the competition because it gets people writing, often about things they would not otherwise have thought of. However! For reasons I’m still not sure of, I decided to make my next entry a crowd-pleaser, to see if I could craft a story that would tickle the judge’s fancy enough to stand a chance of winning. I was lucky enough for my prompts to include Hisao, Emi and the library and ended up writing a fluffy, light-hearted piece called Thorougly modern pirates. I loved writing it, I loved editing it and I still think it’s a strong piece. Emi is by far my favourite of the canon girls and her good ending is the most positive of any of the routes as far as I’m concerned, so writing a cute little story featuring them was a delight. Reactions from the readers was positive too, it seemed that the joy I had in writing it was communicated to them. It also happened to win joint first prize in the writing competition – mission accomplished!
But as time went by I became increasingly uneasy about the process by which I had arrived at the story. I had cynically set out to write a crowd-pleaser: I thought up hooks which would appeal to the reader, and closely referenced the original source material to ensure it felt familiar. Unease turned into guilt. I felt like I had tricked those readers who reacted positively, manipulated them into enjoying it. These feelings have tainted my appreciation of the story. I know it’s a good piece of writing but I can’t bring myself to enjoy it in the way I did when I first wrote it. I’ve learnt my lesson, and will not write with ulterior motives again. Because I’m an amateur, nothing depends on my writing being popular so it’s not a noble gesture to reject chasing popularity: I have the luxury of being able to write things which no-one will ever read and that’s fine.
But I would be lying if I denied that there’s a little piece of me which is pleased that I was able to write an appealing story when I deliberately set out to do so. It makes me think that maybe I’d be able to write to order and deliver what a customer wants. It is not difficult to quash such thoughts; all I have to do is remember how writing a cute story featuring Emi and Hisao in the library made me feel…