Merry Christmas! It’s the last Wednesday of the year, so to finish off my creative writing posts for 2013, here’s a brief review of what I’ve enjoyed most about my writing experience this past year. Enjoy!

Learning about blogging (and more importantly, that I can do it)

Of course I had my doubts about blogging before I started. What blogger hasn’t? But being active in the online community has turned out to be an amazing learning experience. I figured out blogging pretty quickly (the basics, at least), and I’ve learned that I’m surprisingly capable of maintaining my own site. But the best thing I’ve leaned about blogging is that it’s a lot of fun, and I look forward to writing many more posts in the foreseeable future!

Developing discipline

Honestly, when I started this blog, I wasn’t sure I’d have the discipline to write consistently for a long time. I knew the passion of writing would keep me going strong in the beginning (and it did), but as with many of my hobbies, the fire tends to burn out after a while, leaving me with a choice to either continue with an activity that now feels like work or just give up altogether. More often than not, I simply bail, but blogging has turned out to be different. Having made a commitment to my writing publicly keeps me motivated to stay on course, and with that, I’ve been developing a stronger sense of discipline. To my surprise, I’ve found that this actually helps keep the fun in writing, and more importantly, it will certainly be useful when I write my novels!

Discovering new ideas

If there’s one thing the Internet is full of, it’s creativity. Being active online has been great for brainstorming, since there never seems to be an end to the interesting ideas I find. From reading blog posts to trading writing prompts to sharing opinions, being part of the blogosphere has kept my mind active and the new ideas flowing. Could I ask for anything more?

Meeting new writers

This is one of my favorite parts of my writing experience this year: meeting other writers on the same journey as me. Sure, we all may be at different stages, but the important thing is that we all understand what it means to be a writer. We know the joys of building worlds out of words, the sorrows and frustrations of writer’s block, and the satisfaction that comes with finally typing the last period in a story. We all know the ups and downs of writing, and for that, we find strength in supporting each other through the process. In a way, we’re all in this together.

And that concludes my creative writing topics for 2013! Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! Here’s to more wonderful writing experiences in 2014!