In a recent blog post by Anne R Allen, guest blogger, Nina Badzin discusses how she realised she enjoyed writing non-fiction more than fiction. Her idea of being a writer turned out differently to the one she had originally envisioned. Since reading that post, I was beginning to wonder the same about my own writing.
Despite coming up with new ideas for fiction stories, strengthening plots within the drafts of two novellas and working on character development, I feel there is something missing. Lately I have taken to writing more blog posts, which I have enjoyed so that, ultimately, my fiction writing has taken second place. It has stopped me in my tracks and left me wondering what kind of writer I really am.
During my studies, I had grown accustomed to writing non-fiction, yet in the back of my mind the fiction always demanded attention; now the two have decided to go ‘head to head’, so to speak. My husband told me that only I know what kind of writing I want to do, and now my instincts are telling me I have a foot in both the fiction and non-fictional worlds.
When it comes to non-fiction, over the years I had often dabbled with the idea of writing personal essays. It was after all, a personal essay I had to write for an assignment once, where I received a distinction and my lecturer wanted to know if I was going on to do my Master’s degree. That’s when I realised I just might be on to something.
At the moment, I feel I clearly need to express myself more through writing non-fiction than through my fiction. I have every hope that by doing so, this will ultimately lead me to continue with my fictional projects. I now find myself taking a different path with my writing journey – after all, every writer’s journey is different.
Do you prefer to write fiction or non-fiction? Do you also find yourself in both camps? Have you found yourself writing differently to what you had originally intended?
Image by Debbie Johansson.
* As a side note, I will now be returning to Slow Blogging. I will blog on an intermittent basis.
Thanks for the shout-out for Nina’s great guest post on my blog. And yay for Slow Blogging!
Hi Anne. It’s my pleasure! The timing of her post helped put some things into perspective for me, so my thanks to you both. And as an unpublished writer, I think slow blogging is definitely the way to go. 🙂