Her name is Mienne

An aspiring author from the Philippines

I was in high school when I discovered that I might have a passion in writing, although I have been writing since my elementary years. I did not enjoy writing back then. Though the training in writing competitions definitely helped me to build and hone this prowess, I felt that writing is an exhaustive activity with the goal to win. I joined essay writing contests.

It took me years to understand that you can write for the pleasure of writing, with no other goal but to write.

I started with fan fictions of my all-time favourite boy group EXO. With them as my characters, I explored plot, themes, character development, and world building. I was active in Wattpad back then and had earned a number of readers. I upped my writing game by joining fiction festivals where I get to choose a prompt submitted by other people and working with the deadlines of the event. The shortest time, in which I had written so far, was in four months with 56K words. The year 2017 was when I was the most active, with three stories written for different fan fiction festivals. Basing on my statistics, I had around 101k words written.

How I wish I could write that much again. 2018 and 2019 are years of big transition in my life. My family and I moved to California for good. I struggled so much with writing the things I always want to write as I was, and still am, overwhelmed by a new environment full of different people. Time here is gold – in a way that if you waste time, you are practically losing money. The cost of living here is no joke. But I admit that I may be making excuses if I say that working took my time from writing.

I came here with high hopes that I have better opportunities to be published. With my favourite publishing companies being based here, I was like, better chances of being represented by a literary agents and better chances of making it to the industry. I tired to make the most of those transitional years. In my mind, I told myself, I may not be writing – sitting down with my word document open or with pen and paper – but I can collect stories and ideas from people and my own experiences that I soon will write. So far, I have been concretizing the plot and the world I want to build – most of them are still in my head. I have to confess something, however, just between you and me:

I am stuck with choosing what names are good for my characters. I have three weird names and I don’t feel like writing more unless I find the perfect names to give them. Send help.

This is the third that I have written for this year. I hope to have more – either in essays or verses or random scribbles. I’m dumping all of them here.

I am transferring from writemienne.wordpress.com.