A fiction Writer writing nonfiction!
I am someone who loves to tell a good story.
Weaving fantastical worlds on a whim, tucked tight in a notebook. I make up characters, sketch them out in notebooks, and tell stories that come together in my mind. I sit here writing nonfiction, and my imagination struggles not to seep into my words.
I wonder to myself: “What the heck do I write when I have tons of fictional worlds that are way more interesting than me and my opinions?!”
It’s a strange sort of struggle, I admit. A weird sensation of “Well…I’m still writing, but do I find it nearly as interesting?”  I’m not sure! Any poem or short story I write isn’t quite as easy to share or draws that much attention. Yet I love it so much more sometimes. Â
Still, it’s exciting— expanding my forms of writing. I can spill out more opinions and show myself in ways that are not as obvious in my works of fiction. Writing a nonfiction article is blunter. It involves looking at myself in plain sight, beyond the lens of a character I form in my mind.
Even if I absolutely love the characters I made (it’s bad, if prompted, I go on full rants about them and their lore and all the little bits I put into them). In a sense, each character holds a piece of me.
Going from fiction to nonfiction is an odd sort of switch; I’ve spent this whole week working on a creative short story. On and on, it’s 13 pages, 3000-something words, and I loved every moment. Yet here I am agonizing over how to write a minimum of 400 words about myself and my own experiences.
It’s surreal in a way. I think sometimes, my favoring of fiction is a way of hiding from thinking about myself and all the anxiety that comes with it. But it’s also a result of a rampant imagination, galloping like storm clouds across my mind. My mind in turn goes: Â
“Hey, how about we write about a magical prophecy in a kingdom run by women?! There are three heirs and only one is a guy.” Â
“OOO, a mystery and a grief-stricken inventor—deluding himself into thinking his loved one was never gone?! Taking the form of a VERY unreliable narrator! MAKE IT STEAMPUNK!”Â
 “WAIT, how about this time we do spies?! Their code names are all birds. :)” Â
“BIRD NAMED SPY MAN! He’s a total a-hole sometimes—I LOVE HIM! His design is so cool! Let me draw him again!” Â
“Oh, shoot, that ended up 92 pages long.”Â
“ALIENS! This time it’s aliens! A band of unlikely heroes and a hive mind monster!”Â
“Hear me out—paranormal investigators. PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER! And it’s in THREE DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW! One of which that stays unknown until the climax!”Â
“BTW, we’re writing a NOVEL too. Best friends thrown into a magical world, where things aren’t as they seem. Also, his magical powers, they SUCK. And she’s awesome and doesn’t take any of his sh—”
Showering me with these vast ideas that make my brain enter full goblin mode—and do note these are all things I’ve written before. But here I sit, writing nonfiction, about my wacky and weird mental rants and worlds. It really sort of pushes my talents and range as a writer. At the end of the day, I’m still writing, aren’t I?  Even if it isn’t quite the same!Â