I was until recently writing sci-fi short stories based on my maladaptive daydreams, but I’m trying to quit.

I used to write in my journal almost every morning. Did so for years but I’ve recently fallen out of the habit.

I also used to write science or fantasy fiction but haven’t done that in decades.

I do frequently write very short essays, more like in-depth blog posts, on a gaming forum. Usually how the game reflects aspects of real life on a philosophical level.

I struggle with the craft of writing and my more serious stuff gets, at best, a lukewarm reception.

Ironically, my handcrafted memes, joke posts, and quips are very popular there and I have a knack for conjuring up ‘likes’ by doing so but it doesn’t interest me on a deep level.

I keep a dream diary, and sometimes like every few months when I feel like it write a bit of some silly fanfic, & even less so write tiny portion of an essay I won’t finish & as for how I write I just kinda write without thinking about it a lot, guess I’m not WILDlY passionate about writing.

I like to flesh out characters and describe their everyday lives. Habits, hobbies, responsibilities, I always thought those say more about a person’s personality and how or why they do things rather than putting all the weight on traumatic or otherwise heavy back/origin stories.

I journal in my free time. It’s a good practice to have, even if I don’t do it as often as I feel I should. Some is better than none. Sometimes I do it in the morning and set my goals and to do list for the day. Other times I’ll usually write how I’m feeling, what’s been going on, revisiting my notes from therapy to find what may help me at the moment. I’ve found journalling to be really helpful for quieting my mind when I’m feeling anxious or overwhelmed.

On the day-to-day, I write notes in my journal for work:

• what I’m doing
• what I need to do
• things ive learnt
• things I don’t understand
• opinions about these things

Maybe not exactly what your asking about, but it is what I write

Boiled down, I’d say I write cheap porn but I get easily bored with describing the act and widening the scope and end up with more complex stories. Still cheesy as it can be but I enjoy it. Erotica with a sprinkle of bad jokes.

I don’t care about a theme. I grab an idea from thin air and allow things to carry on. I have a couple of romances, a zombie apocalypse themed story, a BDSM heavy (hardest to write for me, as I have zero contact with the practice and lifestyle) historical romance and a project that naturally forked itself from the same concept into two different stories.

Free writing is a helpful exercise.

https://writingprocess.mit.edu/process/step-1-generate-ideas/instructions/freewriting/

Most people don´t have the patience for large vocabulary. If you want to write pretentious award-bait literature, there’s different things to chase after. But most people don´t care about vocabulary or even competent prose, they just want a good story and relatable characters.

I’ve got two long-term projects I’m working on currently. One is a queer post-cyberpunk roadtrip across a post-US North America. It’s on what feels like the thousandth iteration, but I’ve got the plot outline complete and am about a third of the way through a first draft. It’s been in kind of a holding pattern for a while though because I discovered a critical plot hole that will require a full rewrite of what’s already been written and I’m not in love with the very flat style it’s developed along the way.

The other project is more nebulous. It’s sort of a philosophy-informed examination of Utopia, humanity’s innate violent nature, and the destabilizing forcing driving the split-reality-misinformation apocalypse. It will ultimately be a series of related essays on aspects of the topic, written as a web-zine survival guide.

As far as style goes, I’ve been writing long enough that I’ve developed my own style and voice. I have my own idiosyncrasies such as using hyphens to make german-style compound words and using my own lexicon for flavor, but also specificity. I never really wanted to copy anyone else’s style. I’m not super well read either, which gets in the way of my roadtrip novel quite often. I have trouble switching between narration and action or dialog so elegant, flowing prose is not something I’m great at.

For vocabulary I have a good memory for words so I generally have a smattering of compelling words waiting in the wings, but there is no shame in using a thesaurus. I’ve also asked Claude and ChatGPT for help with words as well, especially when there is a word that I know exists but can’t remember it.

I have been blogging on and off since I was a teenager. These days I keep an occasional log of my media consumption and write short commentary about each. Shameless plug: https://buttondown.com/readme.txt/archive/we-are-so-back-bestie/

I write essays about common stuff and poetry when prose doesn’t fit. It isn’t meant to be published but I do like finding new ways of saying things which writing helps me discover.