12/2/25: Writing

So, over Thanksgiving break, I got absolutely decimated by my professor for my essay on AI-generated art, and she didn't use AI to give me feedback notes this time, which was an accidental play on my part but wonderful nonetheless. But it made me feel like an idiot, and more importantly, question what actually makes writing good.  

For a subjective topic, it is strange that we judge the art of writing so rigidly. You can be perfect in grammar but horribly flawed in delivery, and vice versa, and these things might even cancel each other out sometimes. Brevity is the soul of wit, but you need to support your argument verbatim as well. Creative writing has no rules except to manipulate the audience to your desire, but you're also dead to them and they can interpret your work however they like, which includes finding your self-indulgent, sappy bullshit boring, and you can not do a thing about it. Why did writing have to be my favorite hobby? It is so confusing, and open-ended, and it seems like every way to write is wrong but also right. I guess this is one of the aspects of a creative hobby, that people appreciate the work, context. and knowledge put into a piece than the actual end result sometimes. Sometimes, I will read a classic novel and I really just have no understanding of how or why it had become popular. Whether it was a critical failure or a cult classic, a pioneer of its genre, or a standalone gem, it just doesn't click, but people will rave about it anyway and it will continue to be printed. Those dime a dozen young adult novels that somehow get published have a huge audience and they treat books like a can of pringles: non-stop, just okay. It's not my life but I understand that people treat their hobbies differently and subsequently develop different tastes, then it makes me wonder if I am doing this hobby thing wrong. 

I struggle with developing a rich inner world unless it comes easy to me, but then it is difficult to whittle my characters down into tools for a purpose. I struggle with purpose in general. I must have not acquired a part of the brain that makes a phrase memorable; I remember being able to rattle words in my head and give them meaning but I lost that ability long ago. I feel like, as I grow older, my brain becomes more refined for the outside world. but my inner psychological self struggles with the pseudo-shallowness I whitewash my very being with. So, therefore being creative in general has become difficult. Writing is awful. Once, in elementary school, I turned in a creative writing assignment about finding Mudkips scattered across my city. How would I even go about that now? The Mudkip is there, skittering around my mind so that I can make vague associations, like, a water type is super-effective against rock types. I don't even know if that's true. I didn't even play gen 3 pokemon and I always chose fire starters. I just thought Mudkips were a funny concept for whatever reason. What about a concept makes it stick out in people's minds? Most things are boring to me. I think the only genres I get hung up on nowdays have to do with time travel or a split sense of self, because I guess it speaks to me. I'm not sure of the actual reason, though. Maybe because I've been running in circles of my own memories trying to make sense of things enough to write like a human being? How to sound like a human? Chatgpt that. Maybe it will have the answers. 

Anyway, my primary issue with my own writing is probably that I am way too verbose and cannot stick to a topic for the life of me. Even my professors tell me that I go off topic despite being well written. It shouldn't matter, but obviously, something about my writing is obfuscating my own voice and purpose in the meantime. And being a guy who likes to write journal entries as an outlet for the mask I put up in real life, that is very important to fix.