Overcreating didn't kill the cat
Storytelling, and the arts in general, are often looked down on, even though they change lives and require an insane amount of work.
What really annoys the hell out of me is when someone says, "It's just writing. There's nothing difficult about it. Just follow your heart," and all that other BS.
Honestly, I think people who say things like that have never built anything more complicated than an IKEA bookshelf.
Storytelling is an incredible amount of work if you want to do it well instead of simply writing down whatever comes into your head.
Hell no.
Sometimes it takes more time, effort, and research than my master's thesis did. And that's only part of it.
Just think about it.
Imagine you want to write a story set on a sailboat. If you're not already an expert, you have to learn how a sailboat works, what every part is called, what each part does, and how everything fits together. Otherwise, you'll end up making obvious mistakes.
I once had to research whether a retinal scanner would work with a severed eyeball for a story.
Honestly, I hope the police never look at my search history.
And now AI makes everything easier and harder at the same time.
It makes research faster, but it also throws an insane amount of BS at me. Then I have to figure out which information is accurate and which isn't.
Oh, God.
When I wrote about specific streets, I walked through them on Google Maps just so I could describe them accurately.
Again... my search history.
And if you're building a world from scratch, that's a completely different kind of pain. Creating a world, its rules, its geography, its history...
And I haven't even started talking about the characters. Their personalities, their growth, their relationships. Finding their motivations. Understanding why they look the way they do. Every action has to make sense for the person they are. "They did it because the plot needed it" is never enough.
Historical fiction is another challenge entirely. You actually have to do historical research. It isn't enough to rely on what you learned in high school or what you saw in some Z-category historical movie. You have to read recent research and articles about the period you're writing about.
At least if you want to do the job properly.
And honestly, that's just the bare minimum for credibility.
It doesn't mean I'll never make mistakes. It doesn't mean there won't be things I fail to foresee. Of course there will. I'm human.
That's exactly why creative work shouldn't exist in complete isolation. We need experts who can review our work and tell us where we've misunderstood something or where something needs to be rewritten.
There is nothing shameful about admitting that we don't know everything or that the internet doesn't contain every answer.
So yes, storytelling isn't just sitting down and writing.
It's an enormous amount of mental work. Sometimes it requires far more effort than the average 8-to-4 job that society considers "valuable."
Yet people refuse to pay for it while never questioning whether they should pay for a loaf of bread at the bakery.
The funny part is that plenty of those same people happily paid me to write their essays because they didn't want to put in the work of imagining, thinking, and putting their own ideas into words.
And honestly, I made good money doing it.
Some of them hated the fact that something that would take them one or two full days took me only an hour or two, sometimes while I was eating lunch without stressing over it.
But that ability didn't appear out of nowhere.
It came from years of practice. Learning. Experimenting. Failing. Being consistent. Reading. Observing.
It came from an insane amount of mental work and studying psychology, narratology, and pedagogy.
Instead of shutting people out, I tried to understand them. I paid attention to their hidden motivations because I wanted to understand human nature better. That, in turn, helped me create more authentic and more complex characters.
None of it came easily.
Yet people believe everyone can write because everyone knows words and everyone can tell stories.
This ability of mine was always looked down on because, in this country, writing isn't seen as something you can make a good living from the way singing is.
It took me years to rebuild my confidence and finally realize that my words—and the way I use them—are a kind of magic.
I can reshape the world around me.
I can change perspectives.
I can change lives.
I can destroy.
I can build.
I can create.
What I always called overthinking is actually overcreating.
I spent most of my life fighting it instead of learning how to guide it, trying to build dams around a river because I had been taught that letting it flow had no value.
That it wasn't something I could ever make a living from.
Instead of using it as my greatest strength, I wasted years fighting a battle I was never going to win.
Because this is who I am.
This is my core.
Something I cannot—and no longer want to change.
So eventually, the universe inside my head found its way out.
And this time, I'm not trying to force it back in.
The rest of my life belongs to my creativity.