Entering the Woods..

It's never an easy thing to do, picking up an old hobby and starting anew. This is especially true when more than a decade has passed and what once was in, is now out and, trends that once were at their peak have since been replaced with bright and shiny new ones.

While I don't believe that the main premise of writing as a whole has changed; simply put your pen to the blank sheet of paper and fill it with the chaos from your imagination; I do believe that the resources have grown significantly, although, many are repetitions or regurgitations of the same old ideas and theories, just with a new spin. There is nothing wrong with this, as I too have begun to develop my own twist on the centuries old craft of fictional storytelling and the craft as a whole. However, it can all become very overwhelming.

A single evening spent falling down the rabbit hole of Youtube writing vlogs, TikTok book recommendations, Pinterest blog compilations filled with inspiration and writing templates, I quickly found myself closing my laptop and reaching for a bottle of advil to ease my brain's attempt to escape my skull. There are so many different types of resources and informative pieces available on the craft of writing, all in various forms of media, that I personally felt the need to step-back and assess my own understanding and goals in order to make sense of the chaos.

In the end, I decided the best way to document my own progress and understanding, and compile resources that I particularily find helpful along the way, would be to join in on the cacaphony with my very own addition. I created this blog two years ago, with the hopes of forming a concrete writing habit and documenting my journey as I once again pick up my pen and try to fill a blank page with ink saturated in meaningful words. Unfortunately, while I continued to write on and off again, vomiting up novel ideas in a series of notebooks that usually didn't move much further past the premise and an overly complex outline, I failed to document anything at all.

I had felt that the best place to start with flushing out my most recent story idea would be within the pages of a notebook, more specifically, a notebook meant only for writing projects. While this would become one of my greatest steps taken over the past two years of failed starts, I still felt the pull of this blog like a heavy weight at the back of my mind.

While I have yet to begin looking past my notebook and deeper into word processors and computer applications, hoping to spend as much time as possible putting pen to paper before moving away from traditional, anaolgue methods, I do intend to become more intentional and habitual with my blog posts. Although I personally find it much easier to organize my thoughts on paper before getting carried away in the infinite possibilities of modern technology, I plan to move much of my ramblings out of my "author notes" and onto this platform.

In any case, I am armed with an exciting writing project, born in the cold months of December as I sat behind my freewrite traveler following a particularly nasty nightmare that involved the dark void of space (hint, hint), as well as 160 pages of crisp, heavyweight pages and my favourite blue pilot pen. Although I feel, by no means, prepared to embark on this journey, I believe I owe it the twenty-something dollars I pay monthly as a premium member to retain this domain name and my high school self that saw me labeled as an "aspiring author who is destined to be a hopeless librarian". I have not lived up to either of those remarks as of yet, and quite honestly, I fell incredibly far away from that tree, altogether. So, in the spirit of giving a f*** and wanting to explore long forgotten hobbies, (and build a platform of sorts that feeds my creative aspirations), here I am, entering the woods, once again..

Hanna B.