writ⦁er / 'raitǝr/ - noun: 1. a peculiar organism capable of transforming caffeine into books.

I haven't been involved in writing for long, approximately 5 years. When I tell that to people that have known me for quite some time, they can't fathom that I've only been involved with it for that short of time. I've always had an overactive imagination and have always been creative since I was just a wee lass, but I always channeled it into drawing or coloring. The only writing that I had ever done before I unleashed myself into the fiction world was the good ol' English essays. I had always hated them and thought that writing was absolutely stupid. It wasn't until I had let my imagination get the utter best of me in the summer between eighth grade and my freshman year of high school that I had actually taken up fiction writing. I had been a very involved and hardcore One Direction fan (okay, let's get one thing straight, I still am...just tamed) and Harry Styles was (is) the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the sugar that sweetens my tea. I decided to finally let my overactive imagination take the reigns and write a Harry Styles fan fiction. I will not go into details about what it was about, but you can probably guess. (there's probably 110 chapters between the 3 books that I created. I never finished the last one)

The point of this little traumatic rant is that I've ran across a hoard of reasons why I can't live without writing, but for this article, I'll narrow it down to ten. I also love each thing I've included in this list equally! I didn't really rank them...or did I?

10. "Okay, so, you're going to be the devil in a hunky man disguise." (Character Creation)

Creating characters has always been my favorite thing to do - just look at the 50 of them in my Sims library. I like to compare it to complex parenting - you create them and all of their traits before the story starts and then when you start writing, you watch (and make them) grow. You can make the character the spawn of Satan and make them turn into an angel or vice versa. You're literally playing God, if you will. It's one of the best parts about writing.

9. "They'll never expect this." (Plot Twists)

Everyone loves a good plot twist. Just look at the Pretty Little Liars series - it's chalked full of them and it's wonderful. While a nice plain story is good to read, it's also nice to treat yourself to a complete 180 too. Such as: Sal was talking to Viv about her mother's death, to let her know that he knew who did it - the milk man. But before he could tell her, Viv approached him and said, "it was me, Sal. I killed my mother with a plastic knife."

It's fun to screw with people's lives like that.

8. "Would you look at that carrot - OH MY GOSH I JUST HAD AN IDEA!1!!" (Inspiration at Random)

I don't know if this only happens to me, but that sentence about the carrot is actually something that I had said. Granted, it was while I was writing that Harry Styles fic and it was during the day of "I LIKE GIRLS WHO...EAT CARROTS," so that might explain why I had about three scenarios play through my mind. Moving on from my cringy past, I'll be doing a normal everyday activity such as grocery shopping or clothes shopping or working and all of a sudden, inspiration will come knocking and I'll get all excited and have to write it down somewhere or keep thinking about it until I can act on it. Because of these random bouts of inspiration, I have a total of 75+ drafts of ideas saved for future stories.

7. *typing like a madman, picturing self as a bystander in the scene* "EARTH TO BRIANNA!" (Getting Lost in Your Own World)

Every writer does this. It's hard not to, to be completely honest. Saying we're lost in our own world makes us sound like we're completely out of touch of reality. Well, we technically are, but only in that moment. When you are creating a world and the lives of these fictional characters, you get concentrated on it and you get into it and you get lost in this world because it's your own reality made to your liking. My own psychological opinion is that it's healthy to take a step out of actual reality for a little bit because it gives your mind a break and allows it to breathe. I know, writing makes you think. But you're not thinking about your problems directly. You're thinking about someone else's problems - your stepping out of your body and into theirs. It sounds like I'm insane, but believe me, it helps mentally.

6. "I just stayed up until 3 a.m. writing this chapter." (Late Night Motivation)

I'm going to admit it - some of my stories are really hard to get motivated for. It's not because I don't like them - it's more of what kind of mood that it's in, the chapters I write are just kind of fillers before the big dramatics, or I just plain don't feel like writing. But when I get a fire lit under my bum cheeks, you better bet I'm going to write until that chapter is done because if I stop, I'll lose track of the plan that I had out for the chapter. It's like an assembly line in my head basically. It can't be stopped!

5. "Holy Lord, these people are the best. I love them so much!" (Reading Amount of Reads, Votes & Comments)

This one is a bit biased in the fact that it has to do with posting stories online, which is what I do. I'm not going to say any details that would lead you to them because I don't want anyone that isn't a trusted close friend or a complete stranger to read them. But there are these handy little features that allow readers to vote on the chapters, comment on them, and also tracks how many reads the story has. When I had first posted my Harry Styles fic, I didn't expect to get any reads on it. It was kind of a pessimistic attitude, but I was a new account and it was a straight Harry fan fiction. (Trust me, in the world of One Direction fanfics, Larry Stylinson has taken over.) But I ended up getting a total of 46K on it before I made it a draft again. That was my record up until last year when one of my stories went beyond that and is now at 98.6K and going up as we speak. It's my proudest accomplishment and I love my readers because they are so goofy and sweet! I honestly don't think I'd still be writing on that website if it weren't for them and their love. (If you're my reader and you're reading this, I love you and I appreciate you so much!)

4. "OH MY GOD!1!! HE IS SUCH AN ASS. WHY DID HE DO THAT?! UGH I HATE HIM!1!!" (Getting Emotionally Invested to Your Character's Conflicts)

[Excuse my French in this next paragraph]

This is too real. I mean, I love to include some angst in my stories and that usually means making one the asshole and the other the victim. It usually plays out over a few chapters and I don't constantly write, so I can stay angry at one of my characters for weeks until the conflict is resolved - if I so choose to resolve it. In one of my stories, it was about a boy who had depression and was very suicidal. He found love and light in his best friend-turned-boyfriend and they had ended up getting in a fight. Well, the boyfriend had ended up telling the depressed boy that he should've just killed himself when he had tried before and all of this really terrible stuff. I was honestly so mad and angry at the boyfriend when I wrote it. I actually snapped at a friend after I wrote it and then explained that I was angry at my character and they understood. It's a hard knock life.

3. "I am going to miss these characters so much...I'm going to cry." (Feeling Like Every Ending to a Story is the End of the World)

This goes along with becoming emotionally attached to the characters. I love ending stories because it means that I can move onto my next idea. However, I also hate it because I grew to really love my characters. I knew and fell into step with their habits, they way the acted, their personality...and then I have to let them go. I wrote one trilogy (*cringe* Harry Styles fics) because I loved how I made my characters - I was utterly in love with their relationships, their personalities, everything. The majority of them may have been actual living people, but I just used their bodies and a few of their traits. The rest of them was all me. It was how I made them. I haven't wrote a series like that since because it just gets too messy - especially on the website. That and I have other ideas that I want to write, but feel obligated to continue with the trilogy. It's bittersweet, to be truthful. But when I'm done, I feel like a proud mother.

2. "I think I'm going to experiment with this..." (Experimenting With Writing Different Genres)

My favorite thing to write is romance with a happy ending usually. I add some angst and conflict in there to make it interesting and then I usually call it good. However, continuously writing that same genre with that same kind of formula, it gets boring. Sometimes, I'll experiment when I feel sick of it. I'll either go into a different genre or I'll change up my little formula and maybe make it a sad ending. I feel that it keeps things interesting as a writer. It makes it so I can't get bored of it.

1. "YOUR FATE IS IN MY HANDS. MUAHAHAHA." (Creating the Plot/Storyline)

Without a plot or plan, you don't have a story. So, of course this is important and also my favorite part. My characters fate is in my hands and I control their future, whether they like it or not. Again, it's like playing God. When I sit down to actually start planning a story, I feel that this maniacal Elmo really describes me. I enjoy screwing with fictional people's lives because there's absolutely nothing they can do about it unless I say so. *smirks evilly*

Those are some of the reasons that I love writing. Some of it sounds insane and makes me sounds mentally unstable, but that's just because you may not understand. Anyway, I'm going to go off and continue screwing with my character's lives and you have a good rest of your day.