A Case of Writerlust: Concerning College, Community, Critiquing and Alliteration

Before college, I was about as much of a loner as you could get.

Seriously, though, I was not (and still am not) much of a people person. Anyone who knows me knows how cripplingly shy I am, how fairly introverted I can get - complete with just breaking down in tears if I've been around people for too long - but after a year of literally being on my own, away at college, I was desperate and starved for the kind of attention friends could supply. I knew what it was like to be well and truly alone, and I was starting to just cave in on myself.

At the end of that year, I was accepted into the Creative Writing program.

When I got in, I was scared. Scared because I wasn't sure I was making the right decision, going into writing, because a big part of me was becoming increasingly more convinced that the fact that I chose to write YA Fantasy and nothing else made me about as much of a novelist as someone who tweets vulgarities at celebrities for a living. I was self-conscious of the fact that I didn't write about the "serious" subjects, instead writing about magic and elves when everyone else seemed to be writing about abuse and sex and drugs. I hated class introductions, everyone staring at me while I looked at the table, smiling wryly, and recited "I'm Sam, I write young adult fantasy," before falling silent. I was always acutely aware of how it sounds to describe my story as "this Jersey girl falls through a portal into another world and finds out she's a half-breed blah, blah, blah - no, not really like Twilight."

In fact, that was primarily why no one in the program even saw a glimpse of Halfer until the very end of Fall 2011. I didn't want that to be how everyone knew my writing. Anyone in the classes with me knows Rishka's Story, the project I spent basically the entire program working on. Well, I wrote it for you guys, because I was too embarrassed to show you the thing that actually meant something to me.

That's not to say I didn't care about the project. By the end of the first round of workshops, I was unbelievably shocked to find out I'd fallen in love with it. But Rishka was no Rena, an exact opposite, actually, and I didn't feel right leaving Rena without the closure she deserved. (And trust me, the amount of shit I've put her through, she deserves the best kind of closure. It's a shame I grew so fond of tragic endings.)

I think part of the reason I fell so in love with that project (Rishka and Kael), and why I finally felt comfortable bringing Halfer into workshop, was because of the others in my program (if you're here, I miss you guys). Where I'd expected everyone to think of me as "that girl" and kind of roll their eyes whenever it was my turn, I felt like everyone actually cared about what I had to say in these stories. I loved being workshopped, I loved workshopping. I could feel myself actually growing as a writer over those semesters, and when I crossed the stage last May to grab my diploma and stand awkwardly in front of a camera with something akin to a grin/scowl (a growl?), I felt like a completely different writer than I was going into this.

But now, it's January. I've been graduated for 7 months and I won't be going back in two weeks with the rest of you guys. And you know what? I miss it. It's not that I miss the parties, or the long drunken nights of video games, or that time that I watched my boyfriend and best friend win us a Pokemon tournament. (I do.)

It's that I miss the outlet that I had there, that chance to show everyone what I was working on, to read their own projects and sit in that stupid pink room and brainstorm ways to fix all the problems we had on them. It shrivels up and just disappears upon graduation, vanishes, and you're left with this sense of creative helplessness where you don't really know how to rely on yourself anymore for self-editing.

I really loved you guys, all of you, and your ideas and your stories and world's speediest trips to and from Starbucks during break. But I can't Van Wilder my time at Purchase. Out of college, there really isn't much of an outlet for this type of thing, this group session. I have my sci-fi/fantasy group, but they're only once a month, and I have 124 pages of story written. That's not enough of an opportunity to really critique well, not for me.

So, a shot in the dark, but is there anyone out there who knows any writing forums? Preferably fantasy/sci-fi? Even more preferably, active? I'm having the hardest time finding one that is more than just "so I read LotR in high school and decided I wanted to be the next Tolkien/Jordan/Sanderson/ILoveDrizzt so read my kool novel" posts. I have this ideal community in my head of all these friends that just write together and talk about writing and books and don't give me "that look" when I tell them her best friend turns out to be a shapeshifter.

I'm sorry I don't have something more substantial or interesting in the post this time around. I'm just feeling super nostalgic - my GW2 guild fell apart, apparently, while I was away, I miss all my EQ2 friends, today is the kind of dreary weather that turns a human being into a napping cat and I've hit a rough patch in my story where I just wish someone would look at it and tell me if I'm crazy for even trying this in the first place.