It's not really an exaggeration to say that my affiliation with PoE and the F+ have had a pretty big impact on my life and the course it's taken. I'm not proud of all of it, but I value this community and many of the people in it. However there's at least one way in which atrocity tourism has crippled me, and it's that it has made me afraid to write. I've long wanted to write, but a decade of exposure to bad fanfiction and the mockery thereof has taken a toll. I find it very hard to write (it took me two hours to work up the nerve to post this) and I really can't stand to read my own writing. It reads terrible to me, juvenile, a pale imitation of good writing. I have lots of ideas and I want to get them out there, but the natural progression of writing shitty fanfiction when still an impressionable youth in order to get it out of my system has been short circuited by anxiety and shame. I don't know what kind of writer I can be starting at the age of twenty-seven but if I don't try I know I'll regret it as long as I live. To that end, I ask for your help fellow dorks. I need resources to help me learn to write fiction and where better to start my search than here? I'm seriously asking that question. Where can I go for help?
I'm looking for books, blogs, and forums mainly. Things I can read. Places I can get constructive criticism. Advice on how to break past my barriers and let my nerd spill out into the world like a greasy technicolor tidal wave. The main problem that I have, and it's one that I know is common to a generation raised on the internet, is that I've got lots of big ideas and ideas for characters but I struggle to fit them together into an actual story. I have always had trouble beginning and ending things, even when writing in an academic context, and I'm not sure how to take a bunch of setting, themes and characters and string them together into a narrative. Any advice or resources you have that could help me on that would be appreciated. Are there books that have given you good advice? Techniques to build stories that work well for you? I want to know about them!
Other than that, I need your advice on how to break through my own insecurities. I know that half the trouble with writing is just actually writing, but I can't shake the impression that writing something and worse, showing it to someone else can only invite ridicule and humiliation. I hate to read my own work, I'm always convinced that it sounds terrible, unfocused, incoherent, trite. I feel all those things about the things I say in person as well because I am a writhing cauldron of mental disorders and abnormalities, but I have some basic ability to gauge other people's reactions when I speak whereas the only way I have to judge my writing is in the echo chamber of my own terminally insecure mind. Do you do something that makes it easier for you to judge your own work? Do you know some place where you can get constructive criticism for writing that is high quality and not overly hostile? Should I do NaNoWriMo? I'm serious about that. Like I said, this place has kind of warped my ability to put myself out there. I've considered doing NaNoWriMo for several years now but keep backing off in large part due to the mockery that sub-par entries have invited on this very site, but I can't help but feel that even writing something shitty is better at this point than keeping on as I am. Even shitty writing is still writing. I just need somewhere to start and I figure someone here probably know something that could set me on the right path. I know there's lots of sites and forums out there where I can get this sort of advice, but I'm acutely aware that lots of them are complete shit because that's how the internet works. I need help narrowing them down to find one that actually works for me.
I know that this post has been long and way too personal, but I feel that I need to do this. I'm trying to put myself out there more in general because I don't have many friends, I hardly interact with those I do have, and it's going to fucking kill me if I don't do something about it. This is my plea: how do I This Is a Thing I Made (writing)?