Hey, Y'all, its your friendly neighborhood cowboy, Screw, here to talk about somethin' near and dear to me: Writing. I know the writing community on GUN isn't too big, at any given time there might be two or three people producing content here in the literature workshop. Written works get a significantly lower number of views than just about everythin' else on this site. The thing is, when people do give written works a shot they tend to like what they see and I've seen more than one comment saying that reading someone else' work has inspired them to try to write somethin' themselves. In one or two cases I've actually seen a small paragraph or two written up in the comments by the inspired party. Unfortunately, a lot of this inspiration never comes to full fruition, or if it does, we don't see it here. This brings me to my first point: Writing and inspiration.

If you feel inspired to write somethin', then WRITE IT! You might not know where to start, or you might know exactly where to start and give up on it. Here's the thing, you're underestimating both the writing process and yourself. If you're writing a story then a single chapter can take days to get to a point where you feel comfortable sharing it, that's fine. A poem itself could take days to refine and fix things like its structure, its meter, its rhythm, etc. Don't stop working at it, gettin' to that final product, even if its just completing chapter one, is very rewarding. Then post it here because good god we could use some more fuckin' content. If you don't know where to start, try brainstorming. What is the story you wanna tell? What is it's purpose? What is it really about? What feeling or scene do you want to capture in a poem? What is really important to you and what is the best way to convey that? Get started and don't give up! I have been writing for six years and published my stories (to varying results) across seven different websites, I've finished four stories, 12 short stories, and posted an ungodly number of poems. Writing is still a struggle for me at times, but it is an art form, it is a way to express yourself and you should cherish that! So get out there and write!

This brings me to my second point: Feedback. Feedback is the lifeblood of any artist and writers need more than most. It is easy to read another authors work and see what you like about their style or form. It is hard to know what you, as a writer, can do to improve your own style and works. This is where feedback comes into play. The lovely @DVAted left a peace of feedback on one of my poems and it was extremely well composed, unfortunately, it was almost entirely positive. As someone whose been doing this for six years, I can look at most of my work after the fact and see things I could have improved upon, but for new writers this is almost impossible. A lack of constructive criticism leads to either a lack of confidence or over confidence, with the former leading to the author deciding that its not worth continuing on in their passion because they don't know what to do to improve. The latter leads to the author believing there is nothing to improve, that they have, in some way, already mastered the art of writing within their first few pieces. This, in turn, leads to extreme allodoxophobia (A fear of hearing others opinions) and a sterilizing of that authors works. This results in a hostile author who shuts down any constructive criticism and continues to post sub-par works until they are shut down themselves (see: Digital Homicide... Which Ironically was more of a Digital Suicide).

The point is, if you read something, and become inspired by it, write and post. If you read something, no matter what your opinion was, leave feedback, please.

Thank you for reading this PSA, brought to by Friendly Cowboy inc.
circa 2017. Auth. ALonelyBoy. Edit. Y33H4w. Publish. GUNetworkdotcom.