Write for yourself. Write for yourself. Everyone says this when you complain about not receiving enough feedbacks. However what does this really mean?
 

I used to say this and often say this to myself, this mantra. “Write for myself, write for myself.” Whenever I feel down and no one noticed my works or give me feedback. Actually I also repeated the same mantra even before I make an AFF acc and an AO3 acc. I never thought I’d share my works on these sites. Why? Because of some fears. A fear that nobody will like it, something is wrong with my grammar. Something is wrong with my storytelling, something is wrong with my spellings, etc etc. And then I just left whatever stories, ideas I have to sit there as I thought of new ideas. Matter of fact, I think there were one or two years where I didn’t bother to write anything and just daydream myself, I know these stories so well in my head because I kept repeating them and talked to myself… haha.
 

I thought it’s only best that I enjoyed these stories and nobody else needed to read them, and I also thought that if they read them, they wouldn’t understand them, LOL, my damn ego!
 

Then I got into a fandom, well, joining another kpop fandom. I was a Jaejoong stan and I could never bother with anything else. I was casually listening to kpop music and stuff. Anyway to make it short, I joined Got7 fandom and went back into writing. No it was not that I got a new idol group as inspiration that got me back into writing. Actually at first I thought this too, but then I much later realized that it wasn’t the group, it was just my courage being trampled on by my own self. I wanted to write a lot of things, particularly all the cliches stories and all the fantasy stories, yet my own self didn’t want me to go that route, it expected something better. I had to ask myself what could be better? Cliches should happened these days, there are too many stories told, cliches are bound to happen. So just write.
 

And I wrote up a storm. Finished that one ancient fantasy story of mine in a week or two, a story that was in my head for months. And then I started on all the cliche stories I wanted to tell. I made an account on AFF and AO3, I posted my stories. I got viewers and subscribers, but not a lot of comments, yet I still have a lot of inspiration to continue on, why and how?
 

I realized something while I was finishing up Three Days Emperor and continued on to the rest. The stories, they wanted me to write them. They wanted me to finish their stories. It wasn’t to write for myself, but write for them. My stories. My characters. They wanted me to finish their stories.
 

Do not write for yourself. Write for them. Write for your stories. Even if you feel like nobody is giving you feedbacks, even if you feel like nobody is reading them, or like your writings, your stories are actually waiting for you to finish them. Even if it’s badly written, even if it’s full of cliches and full of mistakes, it’s still a story that you’re telling. Only when you finished a story is when you can tell if you improve or not. Do not abandon them because nobody is reading them. You started writing them because the ideas was stuck in your head and you wanted to let it out. Then let it out, write them, AND finished them. If it’s too hard to finish, cut it down and make it a short story. Try your best and finished them, writing shouldn’t be a chore, writing shouldn’t be rigid.
 

There are many rules in writing, but rules are to be bent or break. No stories should be rigid following a pattern, that’s an essay, not a story. Your story can begin in the most normal ways and end in outer space. It’d still be a story.
 

But, how to finish them when I have writer’s block and lost interests? Go a step further and fall in love with their stories.  Yes, fall in love with their stories, your characters’ stories. This is the only way you can fully finish a story. Learn to care for each one of your character’s story. This is the only way you can fully tell a story. You are writing this to tell their stories, not your story. You have no stories to tell, but you have their stories to tell. 
 

So, once again, do not write for yourself. Write for them. Write for your story’s characters. Treat them as real people, and they’re telling you their stories. You are their Ghost Writer.

Aye, I have no free samples this update to give you. Next time…

Anyway, here’s the latest photo of Im Jaebum's beautiful smile.