A letter to the 15 Minute Ficlets comm
Feb. 8th, 2007 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katiefooleryDear 15 minute ficlets,
I only just got to know you and now you’re leaving me forever! Before you go, let me just say a few words.
A few months ago, I was in a pretty dull place with my writing. Sure, I still did it - but where was the love? Where was the obsession? Where was the driving urge to find the perfect-sized paragraph or to see if I could make a shape out of a story by varying the length of sentences?
Missing in action, that’s where. I went to uni to study writing and before I knew it, my love of words had vanished in a skirmish with writing-out-of-obligation somewhere in my second year.
I really hoped that love of writing would turn up again some day. In the meantime, I got by somehow. I even managed to write an entire first draft of Black Fiddle without it. Sometimes, I thought it had come back, but it turns out I was wrong.
It didn’t truly come back until I wrote that first ficlet just a few short months ago. You took all the obligation and expectations away and just let me write for fifteen minutes. You let me write in whatever genre I wanted. You told me it didn’t have to be perfect. You didn’t mark it afterwards and make subtly derogatory comments about how you wished I’d write a proper story, instead of lowering myself to “genre”.
You let me dance about with words and get to know them in a more casual setting... and I can’t thank you enough for that. Even though I’ll be bidding you a sad farewell in May, I’ll always cherish our time spent together. After all, I suspect it’s already going to have a pretty major impact on my writing life from here on in.
Thank-you. You might be “just another LJ community” but you’ve managed to point my writing life in a much brighter and happier direction.
My eternal gratitude,
Katie(foolery).
I only just got to know you and now you’re leaving me forever! Before you go, let me just say a few words.
A few months ago, I was in a pretty dull place with my writing. Sure, I still did it - but where was the love? Where was the obsession? Where was the driving urge to find the perfect-sized paragraph or to see if I could make a shape out of a story by varying the length of sentences?
Missing in action, that’s where. I went to uni to study writing and before I knew it, my love of words had vanished in a skirmish with writing-out-of-obligation somewhere in my second year.
I really hoped that love of writing would turn up again some day. In the meantime, I got by somehow. I even managed to write an entire first draft of Black Fiddle without it. Sometimes, I thought it had come back, but it turns out I was wrong.
It didn’t truly come back until I wrote that first ficlet just a few short months ago. You took all the obligation and expectations away and just let me write for fifteen minutes. You let me write in whatever genre I wanted. You told me it didn’t have to be perfect. You didn’t mark it afterwards and make subtly derogatory comments about how you wished I’d write a proper story, instead of lowering myself to “genre”.
You let me dance about with words and get to know them in a more casual setting... and I can’t thank you enough for that. Even though I’ll be bidding you a sad farewell in May, I’ll always cherish our time spent together. After all, I suspect it’s already going to have a pretty major impact on my writing life from here on in.
Thank-you. You might be “just another LJ community” but you’ve managed to point my writing life in a much brighter and happier direction.
My eternal gratitude,
Katie(foolery).