For months I have been afraid to write fiction.
I journal and have trained myself to write honestly about my reality because it helps me create a narrative I can understand. In doing this though, I became scared to write fiction. To add written words to the stories that popped into my head.
On Monday night I was battling with some anxiety and a wandering mind, so I sat down with my computer, opened up a blank document and told myself I couldn’t get up (or open another tab) for at least 30 minutes.
Then I did something that I’ve been afraid to do for longer than I’ve wanted to acknowledge — I put pieces of myself into a fictional character. Nothing has felt this right in such a long time.
I created a story, a character, a world that I could relate to because in a lot of ways she was me. I was also able to dump a bunch of my problems on this character and that felt really, really good.
Overall, this gave me the idea to start incorporating writing prompts into Too Damn Young, so look out for that!
