I'm Chloe. I'm a writer. It's lonely being a writer sometimes. I'm searching for a community of writers to find friends and like minds, as a means to keep my sanity. The objective is to be surrounded by people who write, and to have a group of people that can offer me advice, pointers, critiques, etc, from time to time. And I think this place is what I may be looking for. I found this place from googling "writing community."
I've been writing since circa 2007. I would use the descriptor "essayist" to describe myself and what I write. I write non-fiction essays. I dropped out of high school, by the way. So whatever and however I know how to write is self-taught. This also means I may write "unconventionally" and use "unconventional" words and spelling sometimes, because I simply never learned how to write from school. To "write unconventionally" here meaning that I actually write the way I talk and think in my head. It's the only way I know how to write. And so, my "writing style" is "freestyle" as opposed to pre-formatted, structured, preplanned, pre-meditated, outlined, and so on. I just write as the thoughts comes out and flow from the top of my head. Exactly as one would write in a journal or diary. I keep a diary.
What I mean by "unconventional spelling" is, I learn how to spell words from what I read, and I read a lot of essays by British & European writers, and so I subconsciously spell some of my words in the British English form and not the American form. I'm born and raised in Southern California [The Valley to be specific] by the way. "Unconventional words" here meaning that I have a subconscious vocabulary accumulated or garnered from what I have read and/or have been exposed to: stuff on philosophy, Buddhist words/concepts in Pali & Sanskrit, right-wing oriented lexicon, and so on. Vocabulary you don't often find in fictional stories in other words.
The essays I write are almost always on the subject matters of: my own Asian culture that I was raised in [I'm mostly Asian], Theravada Buddhism [which I was raised in], Natural Philosophy [which I love dearly with a passion], Metaphysics, Ontology, Postmaterialist science [I dislike scientific materialism], Right-Wing political ideology [I'm not really into liberalism and leftism; although I have friends and family who are liberals and leftists], language & etymology, mysticism, and occult philosophy.
I've been writing on these subject matters for ten years now. My writing skills - quite naturally - sucked butt in the beginning. Over the years I got a little better and better. I started writing on WordPress in 2009. But I don't - or didn't - use WordPress to "blog," per se. I just used WordPress as a place where I can post my essays for public reading. I deleted my WordPress in 2013 since I no longer needed it. But archive.org saved copies of it. At its peak, I got a little over 200,000 hits, which was roughly ~200 hits per day.
In the beginning I had trouble writing an essay that was one page long. My essays were hella primitive back then. But I kept writing, and after a year or two I was able to write 5 page essays that made sense! I kept pushing myself month after month, until I was able to write 50 page essays in one sitting. The longest essays I've written so far is one that was a little over 100,000 words long or roughly ~150 pages on MS Word. I'm not sure if something 150 pages long is an "essay" anymore even. When is an essay not an essay hmm? It took me about a month to write that 150 page essay.
At this moment I can comfortably write circa 10,000 words per day: if the topic or subject is something I like and am confidently knowledgeable in. I don't know how to touch type; yet. I'm currently teaching myself how to do that so I can increase my daily word count. I work a full-time job, so I write about 5,000 words in the morning before work, and circa 5,000 after work.
Writing is ALL I do. I'm obsessed with it. I lock myself in my room and house, and don't go anywhere, or do anything "fun." I don't watch TV or anything. I just read and write. I can't stop myself. It's not really the writing in and of itself that is my compulsion. It's just how my mind works. It thinks and wonders [ponders] a lot, and I have this urgent need to express my thoughts somehow. So I write. I've been having fictional stories running around in my mind lately, and am seeking ways to express/release them. Lest I explode.
From having a WordPress for about 4-5 years, I grew a small population of readers [audience/market] over the years, all by word of mouth, I assume, since I never advertized my WordPress or proactively looked for readers. One person at a time who chanced upon my old WordPress. I just wrote stuff, and dumped them to that old WordPress. I deleted my WordPress and instead started my own digital zine in 2014. The zine is simply a container for my essays and ruminations.
At the moment, my zine has a circulation or readership of ~350-400. I can't tell for sure because I simply upload my zines to archive.org and leave them there, sans any advertizing; but I do know my little market/audience is pretty well established after the passing of a decade. The biggest zine I have produced so far is a little over 400 pages long; 90% of which are my own essays under my own name and a pen name I use. I use the pen name in the same zine for different genres of essays I write, and not to pretend to be two people. My readers know it's me behind the pen name.
There's a reason why I'm bring my writing history up. Recently, inside of me, I have had this unscratable itch to write fiction stories! Fortunately, I have a platform or vehicle to put my fiction stories into: my own zine! So I don't have to worry about submitting my sucky stories and getting rejected
The unfortunate thing here is that my stories suck and the creator and editor of the zine doesn't vet my stuff... because I am the creator and editor
The very unfortunate thing for me, which I have dis-covered, is that it is very, very hard for me to get my brain to write fiction! This is because for a constant decade I've trained my brain to only articulate non-fiction essays about philosophy, ontology, ideology, and so on: boring stuff. Fiction, to my brain is pretty alien. It's like your brain has been trained to think in English and you suddenly want to write French poetry.
My brain is used to essaying, lecturing, orating, ruminations, and spewing forth pure non-fictional philosophical concepts: not making up and telling stories. The problem also has to do with how I write my essays. I start with a black page on MS Word and I ponder on a subject or topic in my mind for a few minutes. I pace around in my room for a while, mumbling to myself. Then I sit down and just write what I feel and hear bubble up from my psyche into my head. Most of the time, when I write long essays I know I am half conscious and half in a light trance or meditative state [we call it samadhi in Buddhism]. This method works fine for me with my essays, but not with fictional stories. With fiction – so I've learned so far – you have to outline your story, structure it, etc. It's something I don't know how to do. But I'm teaching myself how to do it.
It amazes me actually. I have no problem writing a 30-50 page essay on the ontological suchness of reality... the fractal nature of the Cosmos... the Theravada meaning of Samsara, and stuff. But I struggle and strain to feebly write a 3 page fictional story. We all have our kryptonite I guess. But I still try to write fiction. I did manage to write a 30 page fictional story which I slipped into my zine. My sister liked it
It's a primitive fictional story. When I say "primitive" here, I mean to say that it's not sophisticated or spectacular, and that it's rudimentary and pretty crappy. Naturally - or unavoidably - that fictional story is heavily peppered with ideas/ideology/ideations from the subject matters I write essays about. One can't help but see the world in a certain way [world-model], and the language we think in influences greatly how the Self perceives and understands its World. And so even my fictional con-worlds are colored and influenced by my mind and how it sees and understands things, and by the dialectal language [philosophical English] I think in.
The genre this 30 page story I wrote is science fiction/fanasy. It takes place on another planet somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy, during the terminal years of a global ice age. The species on this planet are 99% the same as earthling humans, with minor differences. One difference is that the Y Chromosome in their species vanished over 100,000 years ago. And so they are an all female species. Akin to ants and bees and termites.
This species is also not social like earthling humans, but are colonial like ants and bees. Each colony has its own pheremone scent. Two colonies with different pheremone scents will fight each other until only one colony remains. And so in this con-world, there is no such thing as international trade, international organizations like a United Nations, and no such thing as two nations co-existing side by side peacefully.
I have the whole saga of the species in my head. From the epoch when they emerged out of the ice age as primitive tribes to the epoch of when the last surviving - triumphant - Colony colonized space because their planet was destroyed by a giant rogue planet. It's science fiction, but it's based on my own postmaterialist concepts of natural science and cosmology.
I created a whole conlang [invented language] for this race of people. A whole political system, and a whole economic system for them as well. Which was the fun part. Interestingly - to myself - these fictional things inspired me to expand their socio-political system and economic system into a couple huge non-fictional essays about a different model of government, social order, and economic system/theory.
So, the one thing that helped me learn to be a good essayist was that I did have a small community of associates and readers who gave me constant feedback regarding the essays I wrote and circulated. I have a feeling I need this to help me develop my fictional writing skills.
I've been buying and studying kindle books on the craft of writing fiction, making characters, so on and so forth. It's from the advice I got from these books that made me search for a community of writers. I want to publish a book some day and to be a book author. That's my ultimate goal. I want to leave the comfort zone of my non-fictional essays behind, and write fiction, science fiction/fanasy books. That's my dream.
But at the moment, I'm starting small: just teaching myself how to write flash fiction and short fiction, which is a challenge. There is no way I'll write a fiction novel any time soon... a non-fiction book on Buddhist philosophy... that's conceivable ["what can be conceived can be achieved" --Napoleon Hill]. But not a fiction novel... yet. Actually, I like reading romance and erotica. I can write short smut stories
And so that is why I'm here. To learn bits and pieces of the craft, pick up advice and pointers here and there, and to perhaps meet a few new friends who like to write also. I hope to befriend some/many of you guys here. And I look forward to just reading around and learning passively. I'm approachable and friendly, so don't be afraid to talk to me or ask me random off topic or meaningless questions. Bye.
I've been writing since circa 2007. I would use the descriptor "essayist" to describe myself and what I write. I write non-fiction essays. I dropped out of high school, by the way. So whatever and however I know how to write is self-taught. This also means I may write "unconventionally" and use "unconventional" words and spelling sometimes, because I simply never learned how to write from school. To "write unconventionally" here meaning that I actually write the way I talk and think in my head. It's the only way I know how to write. And so, my "writing style" is "freestyle" as opposed to pre-formatted, structured, preplanned, pre-meditated, outlined, and so on. I just write as the thoughts comes out and flow from the top of my head. Exactly as one would write in a journal or diary. I keep a diary.
What I mean by "unconventional spelling" is, I learn how to spell words from what I read, and I read a lot of essays by British & European writers, and so I subconsciously spell some of my words in the British English form and not the American form. I'm born and raised in Southern California [The Valley to be specific] by the way. "Unconventional words" here meaning that I have a subconscious vocabulary accumulated or garnered from what I have read and/or have been exposed to: stuff on philosophy, Buddhist words/concepts in Pali & Sanskrit, right-wing oriented lexicon, and so on. Vocabulary you don't often find in fictional stories in other words.
The essays I write are almost always on the subject matters of: my own Asian culture that I was raised in [I'm mostly Asian], Theravada Buddhism [which I was raised in], Natural Philosophy [which I love dearly with a passion], Metaphysics, Ontology, Postmaterialist science [I dislike scientific materialism], Right-Wing political ideology [I'm not really into liberalism and leftism; although I have friends and family who are liberals and leftists], language & etymology, mysticism, and occult philosophy.
I've been writing on these subject matters for ten years now. My writing skills - quite naturally - sucked butt in the beginning. Over the years I got a little better and better. I started writing on WordPress in 2009. But I don't - or didn't - use WordPress to "blog," per se. I just used WordPress as a place where I can post my essays for public reading. I deleted my WordPress in 2013 since I no longer needed it. But archive.org saved copies of it. At its peak, I got a little over 200,000 hits, which was roughly ~200 hits per day.
In the beginning I had trouble writing an essay that was one page long. My essays were hella primitive back then. But I kept writing, and after a year or two I was able to write 5 page essays that made sense! I kept pushing myself month after month, until I was able to write 50 page essays in one sitting. The longest essays I've written so far is one that was a little over 100,000 words long or roughly ~150 pages on MS Word. I'm not sure if something 150 pages long is an "essay" anymore even. When is an essay not an essay hmm? It took me about a month to write that 150 page essay.
At this moment I can comfortably write circa 10,000 words per day: if the topic or subject is something I like and am confidently knowledgeable in. I don't know how to touch type; yet. I'm currently teaching myself how to do that so I can increase my daily word count. I work a full-time job, so I write about 5,000 words in the morning before work, and circa 5,000 after work.
Writing is ALL I do. I'm obsessed with it. I lock myself in my room and house, and don't go anywhere, or do anything "fun." I don't watch TV or anything. I just read and write. I can't stop myself. It's not really the writing in and of itself that is my compulsion. It's just how my mind works. It thinks and wonders [ponders] a lot, and I have this urgent need to express my thoughts somehow. So I write. I've been having fictional stories running around in my mind lately, and am seeking ways to express/release them. Lest I explode.
From having a WordPress for about 4-5 years, I grew a small population of readers [audience/market] over the years, all by word of mouth, I assume, since I never advertized my WordPress or proactively looked for readers. One person at a time who chanced upon my old WordPress. I just wrote stuff, and dumped them to that old WordPress. I deleted my WordPress and instead started my own digital zine in 2014. The zine is simply a container for my essays and ruminations.
At the moment, my zine has a circulation or readership of ~350-400. I can't tell for sure because I simply upload my zines to archive.org and leave them there, sans any advertizing; but I do know my little market/audience is pretty well established after the passing of a decade. The biggest zine I have produced so far is a little over 400 pages long; 90% of which are my own essays under my own name and a pen name I use. I use the pen name in the same zine for different genres of essays I write, and not to pretend to be two people. My readers know it's me behind the pen name.
There's a reason why I'm bring my writing history up. Recently, inside of me, I have had this unscratable itch to write fiction stories! Fortunately, I have a platform or vehicle to put my fiction stories into: my own zine! So I don't have to worry about submitting my sucky stories and getting rejected
The unfortunate thing here is that my stories suck and the creator and editor of the zine doesn't vet my stuff... because I am the creator and editor The very unfortunate thing for me, which I have dis-covered, is that it is very, very hard for me to get my brain to write fiction! This is because for a constant decade I've trained my brain to only articulate non-fiction essays about philosophy, ontology, ideology, and so on: boring stuff. Fiction, to my brain is pretty alien. It's like your brain has been trained to think in English and you suddenly want to write French poetry.
My brain is used to essaying, lecturing, orating, ruminations, and spewing forth pure non-fictional philosophical concepts: not making up and telling stories. The problem also has to do with how I write my essays. I start with a black page on MS Word and I ponder on a subject or topic in my mind for a few minutes. I pace around in my room for a while, mumbling to myself. Then I sit down and just write what I feel and hear bubble up from my psyche into my head. Most of the time, when I write long essays I know I am half conscious and half in a light trance or meditative state [we call it samadhi in Buddhism]. This method works fine for me with my essays, but not with fictional stories. With fiction – so I've learned so far – you have to outline your story, structure it, etc. It's something I don't know how to do. But I'm teaching myself how to do it.
It amazes me actually. I have no problem writing a 30-50 page essay on the ontological suchness of reality... the fractal nature of the Cosmos... the Theravada meaning of Samsara, and stuff. But I struggle and strain to feebly write a 3 page fictional story. We all have our kryptonite I guess. But I still try to write fiction. I did manage to write a 30 page fictional story which I slipped into my zine. My sister liked it
It's a primitive fictional story. When I say "primitive" here, I mean to say that it's not sophisticated or spectacular, and that it's rudimentary and pretty crappy. Naturally - or unavoidably - that fictional story is heavily peppered with ideas/ideology/ideations from the subject matters I write essays about. One can't help but see the world in a certain way [world-model], and the language we think in influences greatly how the Self perceives and understands its World. And so even my fictional con-worlds are colored and influenced by my mind and how it sees and understands things, and by the dialectal language [philosophical English] I think in.
The genre this 30 page story I wrote is science fiction/fanasy. It takes place on another planet somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy, during the terminal years of a global ice age. The species on this planet are 99% the same as earthling humans, with minor differences. One difference is that the Y Chromosome in their species vanished over 100,000 years ago. And so they are an all female species. Akin to ants and bees and termites.
This species is also not social like earthling humans, but are colonial like ants and bees. Each colony has its own pheremone scent. Two colonies with different pheremone scents will fight each other until only one colony remains. And so in this con-world, there is no such thing as international trade, international organizations like a United Nations, and no such thing as two nations co-existing side by side peacefully.
I have the whole saga of the species in my head. From the epoch when they emerged out of the ice age as primitive tribes to the epoch of when the last surviving - triumphant - Colony colonized space because their planet was destroyed by a giant rogue planet. It's science fiction, but it's based on my own postmaterialist concepts of natural science and cosmology.
I created a whole conlang [invented language] for this race of people. A whole political system, and a whole economic system for them as well. Which was the fun part. Interestingly - to myself - these fictional things inspired me to expand their socio-political system and economic system into a couple huge non-fictional essays about a different model of government, social order, and economic system/theory.
So, the one thing that helped me learn to be a good essayist was that I did have a small community of associates and readers who gave me constant feedback regarding the essays I wrote and circulated. I have a feeling I need this to help me develop my fictional writing skills.
I've been buying and studying kindle books on the craft of writing fiction, making characters, so on and so forth. It's from the advice I got from these books that made me search for a community of writers. I want to publish a book some day and to be a book author. That's my ultimate goal. I want to leave the comfort zone of my non-fictional essays behind, and write fiction, science fiction/fanasy books. That's my dream.
But at the moment, I'm starting small: just teaching myself how to write flash fiction and short fiction, which is a challenge. There is no way I'll write a fiction novel any time soon... a non-fiction book on Buddhist philosophy... that's conceivable ["what can be conceived can be achieved" --Napoleon Hill]. But not a fiction novel... yet. Actually, I like reading romance and erotica. I can write short smut stories
And so that is why I'm here. To learn bits and pieces of the craft, pick up advice and pointers here and there, and to perhaps meet a few new friends who like to write also. I hope to befriend some/many of you guys here. And I look forward to just reading around and learning passively. I'm approachable and friendly, so don't be afraid to talk to me or ask me random off topic or meaningless questions. Bye.
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