A Story For You: Writing Gifts
Photo / Drawing by Christy V.
Mary Shelley wrote her novel Frankenstein because of a ghost-story competition within a literary group. In many cases, we get inspired to write different stories for many reasons. Sometimes we reveal what inspired us and other times we let the audience figure it out. Recently, I was trying to figure out what gifts I could give to friends of mine for their birthdays. I thought about writing short stories for them. They challenged me to write stories that were inspired by them in some way. During the week that I’m sending their gifts, I felt like sharing how creating these gifts also inspired me to step up my writing skills.
I’m thankful to have friends in my life that support me and my writing. So it was special to write two short stories as a way to show my gratitude for their support and especially their friendship. It started off with thinking about ideas that they were interested in, and connected with me. Once I had some ideas, I narrowed down those ideas to plan out how I would write out the short stories. I wrote some notes and drew this mermaid, which is a hint to one of my stories, in my journal. Then I started typing out the stories into Google Docs.
One of the stories came to me really quickly, but I realized that both would delve into ideas that mattered. I find that I’ve been doing more stories like that lately, and I enjoy doing so. Some thing that Jeremy Jordan inspired me to become a better writer, and led me to my friends. I did a bit research, and started writing out the first story that seemed to flow out of me, which included mermaids. I did a bit of revision and editing afterwards, but I felt good with it. I look forward to sending it soon. The second story took a bit more time to write and revise. It was closer to reality and I wanted to write it the best way I could. I had to do a bit more planning after I had originally planned to get a better idea of what would happen. I’m thankful it turned out better than I expected.
All you can do with writing is do your best, and hope it is received well. Even though my friends are supportive, I still wanted them to get my best work. Keeping them in mind, made writing these stories a different experience because normally you don’t know who your audience is, but you can imagine it. I brought in ideas that made me think of them too, which made the writing personalized. I hope someday to share these short stories in some way, but I’m glad that I was able to write them for my friends as birthday gifts. Thank you to them for helping me to be a better writer, and inspire me to keep improving on my craft. Most of all, thank you for being my friend. I wouldn’t be me without you. Check back next week as I prepare for Camp NaNoWriMo’s July session.
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