Writing Through the Ages: Stories I've Created Out of Sheer Hyperimaginativity

I've been constructing story lines, places and characters in my head for as long as I can remember. It was back in elementary when I started to put them into words. And boy, were they terrible. Grammatical errors ran rampant in my sentences and the format itself is a Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley rip-off, with numbered volumes of a so-called "True Friends Club" series with a childish adventure in every installment. I used to grow callouses on my fingernails because of the long hours I spent writing on a cheap notebook with an equally cheap pen.

Never-finished novel length stories came afterward when I learned to type on the computer with decent speed (thanks to my mother's rigorous typing lessons complete with an antique Typewriter Typing book). Those stories included a Dawson's Creek inspired dramatic cheese fest and even a Castaway-ish murder-mystery-in-an-island chaptered novel where the survivors of a shipwreck fight for survival from the wilderness and maybe even one of their own as someone mysteriously gets killed off every week through the unlikeliest circumstances. And take note, that was way before Lost the Absolutely Confusing TV Series aired on US primetime. And yes, I can be Nostradamus that way.

What came next is fanfiction. The Harry Potter fanfiction community is where I lived for most of my prepubescent years. After reading too many fics for my own good, I've grown envious of how they were creating their own HP worlds so I also made my own. Not all were good but I have to say they were quite imaginative. One is an angst buffet concentrating on  the past and sufferings of a specific Hogwarts teacher in each chapter. Really depressing, believe me. Another is an incredulous hybrid of romance, post-war anguish and wit where a fierce and smart-mouthed Ginny Weasley is forced to apply as a maid for the Malfoy Manor and serve a sarcastic and very very handsome Draco Malfoy in Leather Pants. And yes, it is inspired by Cassandra Claire's epic Draco Trilogy.

Needless to say, most of them were also never finished. Insert sad face here.

Then came blogging and suddenly, my crooked opinions infiltrated the world wide web. The characters and their contradicting lives were pushed to the side and the imagination died down a bit as real opinions and actual life took center stage. School works and peer gatherings bathed in the spotlight of my writing and the castaways, the angsty dramatic teens and my very own masochistic Harry Potter universe took their last shriveled breath.

So what's next? Unfortunately, the death of fanfiction came with the demise of my fiction writing altogether.  Instead of writing my own world, I find myself reading tweets or just watching online videos to pass the time. Since those simpler times devoid of web junk, I have not been able to write a decent story to save my life. I am not proud of this, in fact, I am very much frustrated. I hope that this new project that I'm working on will help jump start some of my creative neurons and bring them back to the bustling cells they were before the brain drain of social networking sites and microblogging platforms.

As of now, my own universe of reluctant island campers, red haired house maid and emo teens are in limbo.