I Never Considered Myself a Storyteller

For a girl who spends most of her time dwelling on completely unrealistic and made up scenarios in her head, it may seem odd to say that I never considered writing fiction.

I always felt like that was an avenue of writing reserved for a particular breed of writer— you know, the creative, eccentric, bold types. The types that live fascinating, obscure lives that we ordinary folk only read and dream about.

I always felt more like the "mum blog" type. I could write about what I knew. The facts, thoughts and feelings of my reality, and that was the lane I should remain firmly in.

Then I joined Vocal.

And perhaps more importantly, I joined the online Vocal Facebook communities. It was in these communities; I started to notice a lot of fiction popping up in my feed. And some of it was really, very good. I also noticed that many of the authors of these works seemed perfectly.... ordinary. I mean that in the most complimentary of ways because it was that trait that first let the thought fleet through my mind, that maybe, I could write something fictional. Because these creators seemed to be just like me.

I was determined to stop that fleeting thought in its tracks. I could never have the audacity to write something fictional and post it online for others to read... Could I?

For a few months, I continued on, writing blog-style articles and listicles about whatever piqued my interest at the time. I even managed to snag two top stories. "Not bad for a rookie", I remember thinking to myself.

Then the "First Date" challenge appeared. I saw lots of people posting their entries with comments like, "This is my first attempt at fiction". I read the stories and the corresponding comments, which were always constructive and kind. I felt inspired.

So, I wrote a short story.

In hindsight, it was pretty bad. But, I have similar feelings toward most of my pieces from early on, including the two 'top' stories.

Practice makes perfect, so they say, or in the case of writing, it makes for significant improvements. I'm not sure perfect exists in this game. So, I made a commitment that I would enter a piece in every fiction challenge Vocal posted for the purpose of practice. The deadline of the challenges helped because I would never have had the motivation to finish what I started without them.

And then something unexpected happened.

I started writing fiction for fun. No prompts. No challenges. Just the tiny amount of confidence needed from taking the initial plunge into something completely foreign. As with all things, the more I did, the more I began to see things evolving. Descriptions became more vivid and dialogue a little less clunky until I could confidently piece together something resembling a real story.

Some of it never sees the light of day. Some of it is hidden in the depths of the internet under a different name. Most of it gets posted on Vocal or Medium, and a lot of it gets entered into challenges. For the challenges, I've started letting the prompts find their way into my work rather than the prompts guiding the work itself. That means it's easy to pull something from the back catalogue and add a "green light" or "old barn", for example.

Writing fiction allows me to write something every day. Maybe it's a short story or a chapter to a longer piece of work. Maybe it's for a challenge, maybe it's simply to get the made-up stuff out of my head so I can focus on real-life with a little more clarity. Sometimes it's terrible, sometimes it's worse than terrible. Other times it's passable enough to hit the publish button. In all of these scenarios, it's a wonderful experience. And with the addition of Vocal's fiction community, there is more demand and opportunity for creators to try their hand at fiction than ever before. So why, as a writer, wouldn't we be having a shot at fiction?

Because there's a caveat.

And that is, you need to be prepared to get addicted. To want to explore what you're capable of and try new things. But the absolute must, I believe, when dabbling with fiction, is you need to be able to not care about whether or not it's good.

If you choose to hit publish, you might get 1 read or you might get 1000. Some people will think it's the worst thing they've ever read, while others will feel like you opened the window to their soul.

It's not like writing a factually correct, well-written article. Even if it's boring or unenjoyable to the reader, it's hard to argue whether it's technically good or not. You can rest assured if you've done your due diligence with your research and constructed it well, you have published a 'good' piece of work.

Fiction is far more subjective. Sure, you should still run it through Grammarly but in terms of whether what you've come up with is good, well, that's in the eye of the beholder.

Do you like your story? That's all that matters.

Maybe, like me, you never considered yourself a storyteller. At least not a fictional one. But as a creator, no harm can come from flexing our creative muscles as often as possible. Even if your niche is writing about the latest cryptocurrency trends, fashion, fitness or self-help... writing something fictitious can only strengthen your ability to tell the factual stories.

It's certain you'll never see my name listed amongst the literary greats. It's even more likely that my highest earner will continue to be a rant about babies and sleep. But that won't deter me from telling stories, because it's these stories, even the ones that no one reads, that are allowing me to become the kind of writer I really want to be—The kind of writer who still writes on the days it seems there's nothing to write about and on the days when the self-doubt and imposter syndrome starts to creep in. The kind of writer who knows there's always a story to be told and the only thing stopping you from telling it is the worry of whether or not it's good enough.

The lesson? Think less, write more, read more than that and always tell the story.