Last year I set up a Patreon account [1], initially mostly to let folk who wish to support me in my efforts to write that autobiography that I have been blathering about since 2013. Over the past months this basic concept has transformed into something more, however.
I have been writing fiction since I was a child, finding myself initially inspired by writers like Stephen King, Dean Koontz and gradually expanding my horizon to include broad swathes of fantasy (Tolkien et al.), having found myself essentially reading mostly such fantasy works over the years, along with a range of classics (currently 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand [2]).
Moving my own works of fiction from works in the style of Stephen King et al. into something more... original, I have found myself inspired to write about things that move me in some way. This is what led me to start writing a completely new version of Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, along with short stories such as 'A Dying Fire's Ember', the latter being inspired by a real-life story which I read by an ER doctor.
I also started a story called 'In Between and Neither' back in 2010 or so, about a young intersex girl, which turned out to be both original, yet close enough to my own story to be called semi-autobiographical. It led to a spin-off story called 'In Between: A Love Story', which was also inspired by something I read, combined with the concepts I had floating around for In Between and Neither.
I love writing stories, to see those worlds and characters come to life inside my head, as well as in the head of anyone who reads it. That's why it felt so natural to take it to the next step and start reading those stories for those who prefer audiobooks. For myself it's an interesting next step to move from the monk-like work of writing books to something more akin to acting. Not just reading the text, but trying to perform the story, with voices for each character and trying to get the intonation and inflection correct.
This is currently the primary type of content on my Patreon account, with most of those videos being made available on my YouTube channel [3] as well after a brief exclusive period for my patrons. Currently I'm working through the never-released original chapters 3 through 5 of In Between and Neither, which I rewrote after my suicide attempt in early 2011. As I intend to continue In Between and Neither's story and bring it to some kind of conclusion, I feel it's important that I compare both versions in this fashion, along with the feedback from my patrons and other viewers.
Working on getting some content published every week like this adds a kind of regularity that I feel is important for such creative work. Though I hardly have a massive following on Patreon at this moment, it is enough to inspire me to write more chapters of Ocarina of Time, more chapters of In Between and Neither, and to do my best to bring this old dream to fruition to make people experience new worlds and ideas through my stories. Meanwhile for folk who prefer to read their stories instead of listening to someone waffling into a microphone, there's also the Library section [4] on my website, which contains digital versions, with ePub versions gradually being made available as well.
Alongside all of this, I have resumed work on my autobiography, while feeling much happier with the new writing style and approach that I'm using for it. Before long, I hope to do readings of these autobiography chapters as well, though I'm likely to keep those exclusive to my patrons. At least for now. It's one thing to put fictional stories out in the open like that, after all, yet something else to put my own story out there, in a way that goes beyond even my ramblings on this blog.
Sometimes a story needs that bit more intimacy and shelter to grow properly, after all.
Maya
[1] https://www.patreon.com/MayaPosch
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead
[3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyuqprsuY8JyCTn4IgDbS8g
[4] http://mayaposch.com/library.php
No comments:
Post a Comment