Writing has been both an obsession and an absolute failure for me. I truly enjoy creating stories, depicting exciting and intriguing plots with characters that contain true emotional depth. The problem is, no one is interested in reading them. I know, writers shouldn't care about who reads their work, if anyone at all, but it would be nice to get the occasional feedback from a story I worked hard on. For example, I worked on a short story for months, edited it well over a hundred times, developed out two characters that were interesting and down to earth, when it was posted to an online forum where people comment on original works, it received no comments. That's a little heartbreaking to me.
I think it boils down to the fact that I possess a much different imagination than most people, which in turn affects my personality. What I find interesting or inspiring, others find boring or terrible. I won't say that there isn't anyone out there that shares the same imagination as me, but in all my years on this earth I have never found anyone I can truly connect with on that level. Growing up I never had a best friend. I've always had friends, but I was always just another option. I blame this on my personality for the most part. There is a part of me that wants to be accepted by the people who I'm close with, and I think in someway that shows through and it makes me push those people away a little bit. Sure they're my friends, but if I left their life it wouldn't diminish theirs. Over the years I've gotten use to this fact that all my friendships will terminate sooner or later and there has even been months or even years at a time when I didn't have any actual friends. I think that is part of the reason why I've developed such a dark imagination. When your world is dark, what else do you expect to find inside your head other than the abyss?
I believe the darkness and the creatures that live within it comfort me in someway. The fact that I'm able to thrive in such an imagination makes me feel different from everyone else who may not respond too well to the images and thoughts that grow in my mind. When I do write, my stories all seem to take a darker tone. They contain such themes as: loneliness, depression, the futility of mankind and of existence, and death. I tend to focus on the antagonist or the evil figure more so than the main character. For example, I toyed with the notion of working on a story where it is strictly from the view of the villain. The villain in this story was a wizard who, by accident, destroyed his entire continent, killing everyone he loves and erasing his homeland from existence, because the ones he loved failed to acknowledge his existence. He finds himself in a type of Purgatory, where he is tortured by an entity who convinces him that he is powerful enough to reshape the universe with his bare hands and can finally make everything work out for him if he just gives in to evil.
In a way I can see myself in that character. To be spurned and misunderstood in reality only makes me want to dive into my imagination where I have complete control. It's the only thing that makes my life bearable. One day I hope to at least be able to make a few fans with my writing, or even just an acknowledgment that someone enjoyed reading one of my short stories for five minutes. Until then I will struggle on to make the best of my reality and my writing.
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