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#LateNightWrite
For no reason I've EVER understood, almost everything I wrote in high school was about two people meeting and becoming friends.
Most of my long-form stories now involve themes of friendship and often loneliness, but in small groups instead of couples, and include other deep themes.

this question has made me realize that in many ways, my writing interests have both changed wildly & stayed amusingly the same

I guess one major change is that I hardly write stories taking place in the modern, current world anymore. contemporary fiction used to be all I’d write
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oops sorry for vanishing from #LateNightWrite but I was LOCKED IN with the result that I finished a first draft of a short story for which I had the idea *yesterday* fuck yeah

#LateNightWrite Stories I write now have no one in the closet.

I became bolder with things like horror, sex, and letting characters make stupid mistakes instead of making them perfect.

I've always had found family, underestimated heroes, overcoming trauma, and some of my favorite romance tropes were there before I realized I *wanted* to be

#LateNightWrite

Middle School me was focused on big epic plots. Every single conflict would spell the end of the entire world. These days, I tend to like more “zoomed in” character focused stories. The stakes still matter, but they’re more personal.
Both are good! I just like smaller stories now.

Well, I've stopped naming my characters after soap opera ppl, but I'm still deep into the heroine saves hero trope. And 15yo me did not know how to write good sarcasm; I got a crit from an agent to my first book that was, "bickering is not interesting." My banter's much funnier now. #latenightwrite

#LateNightWrite
I didn't start writing stories until I was in high school. I told myself stories my whole life as a means of escape, but I didn't start writing them until I was 17. It already had heavy themes of otherness & responsibility to those who failed you by virtue of knowing better.

however I still write characters who are mostly older than me, only since I've aged up, they have, too

~fin

#LateNightWrite

these days mostly I think my writing is better and also it's a lot less obvious where my inspiration is from lol

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but ANYWAY the point is that it's also shocking how much Baby E's writing improved in one year

like was it still very cringey and terrible, yes, but also it was MILES better in every single area, which was nice to see

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after reading that "novel" I read one I'd written one year later that was very obviously inspired by film!Arwen from LotR (but without her actual plot line or backstory at all), which should've been an early sign I was queer but I digress,

#LateNightWrite

Uh, my earliest writing days was writing fanfiction at age 10. I started taking writing seriously at 13. Thinking about it, I still like the same pairings as I did back then (protagonist x villain type of stuff) but I hope my fiction is more refined than then! 😂

like actually a couple, JUST a couple, but a couple, lines in that first "novel" had me like ...okay I'd actually still write this exact line today

which made me a lil mad ngl but it was also kind of impressive

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HOWEVER ☝️ it's shocking how many themes and tropes are in that story* that are still present in my writing now

- found family
- the importance of human connection
- LI almost dies
- LIs bonding over similar traumas
- good nature descriptions

*for context, I was 12

#LateNightWrite

oh god lmao. well. as you may know. bc I talk about it sometimes and once livetweeted a readthrough,

my first "novel" (50 pages) was basically PotC AU fanfic where Will and Elizabeth chased wild ponies across the moors of fake fantasy Scotland with Yanno from THE MOORCHILD

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Braelyn's fear of Velimiar and what he's capable of has its own journey throughout the series. I think book 4 (and maybe 5?) is where her fear of him is the absolute highest (based on the events between books 2 & 3). I'm trying to lean into that while writing "Son of Embers".

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I won't say I've *fully* overcome it, but I have gotten a little bit more comfortable with sharing my work with people (for critique purposes). The thought of it doesn't make me violently ill anymore, just a little bit nauseous 😅

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