Muse Ariadne Writing Club

Prompt: write about what ways writing plays a role in your life-- why do you like it? is it hard? what's your relationship with it? be as abstract or direct as you'd like.

If you'd asked me about my relationship with writing a few years ago, I would have told you that I loved writing fanfiction, but hated writing anything original, and muddled through it only when necessary for RPG Maker development. But I also would have told you I was too scared to watch horror movies or have a pet cat or eat a cookie I dropped on my lap. I would have told you I hated reading and hadn't done it for fun, outside of fanfiction, in nearly a decade.

I am, in many ways, very different than I was a few years ago. Among the list of life-defining changes, I got medicated for my anxiety disorder, realized my anxiety disorder was specifically obsessive compulsive disorder, and started teaching myself exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy techniques. These three things have opened up countless doors for me and I'm so grateful for how much my life has expanded, especially in regards to art.

But it leaves me in a weird spot, realizing so much about me has changed that I'm not sure what's true anymore. The idea of doing any form of original writing still makes my brain start to rebel against itself, but I haven't tried pushing through it yet to see what's on the other side. I know at least part of my issues with it stem from OCD — or more specifically, scrupulosity — but it's technically possible I also just don't like it anymore.

There's only one way to find out.

I'd like to use this club for exactly that, feeling out my answers to these questions more broadly. In the meanwhile, though, I can tell you what I do know:

I love writing fanfiction. With fanfiction, I use writing as a way to express my love and my time buried inside my special interest. I get to take the scenarios I daydream in my head and making them a little more real, so I can revisit them whenever I want to, or share them with my friends.

I also love making games with RPG Maker, and those need stories. I get a thrill out of picking a character who would be an NPC in a typical high fantasy game and zooming in on their life, figuring out what story makes them the hero.

These forms of writing come with built in restrictions. In some ways, that makes it harder: there are things I can't do, or I have to really struggle to figure out how to. But there's also a sense of guidance that makes it easier, and when I get it right and things slot into place, it feels like finishing a puzzle.

I've also found personal essay writing to be really satisfying. I've always struggled with wanting to vent about the same topics over and over again, and so I've never been able to journal. A blank page and nobody to read it grates against my OCD, and I find my thoughts spiraling and looping. But with an essay, I have an audience, or at least I write as if I do. I can't ramble on about every interconnected thought I have. I have to pick my point and make it. It's worked really well to help me get out what's bothering me just once and be able to move on afterwards.

If these — fanfiction, game dev, and essays — are the only types of writing it turns out I enjoy, I'm more than fine with that. They're fun and emotionally fulfilling. They help me express myself and sort myself out. I don't need to enjoy writing original prose to be a writer in the ways that matter to me. But I'm also really curious to revisit my relationship with original works. I hope to use my involvement in Muse Ariadne for a little bit of all of the above.

Prompt: write about a worldly place that is a threshold for you. this can mean anything-- maybe it's some place between end and beginning, forward and backward, past and present, here and there, friends and lovers, or something else entirely!

The movie theater is in a converted mall, supposedly with new life breathed into it, but it feels abandoned. My siblings and I walk past shuttered storefronts to buy our tickets at a self-serve counter and don't see another person for the first five minutes we're there. Wide, empty hallways stretch in either direction. If we weren't here to watch a horror movie, I might suggest following one until we stumble onto one of the shops Google Maps claims still exist.

I don't doubt that the theater existed in the mall's original incarnation, but it seems to have stretched forward upon the closing of its neighbors. Our ticket counter is yards away from the yawning staircase that leads to concessions and check-in. I feel giddy to show off my ticket, half expecting to be carded, as if I haven't read as drinking age since I was thirteen. Really, I just feel like somebody should stop me.

It's so obvious to me that I'm doing something I shouldn't, it's funny that nobody else realizes it. If I so much as read the wrong Wikipedia page, it sears itself into my brain for years, the terse summaries of assault and torture winding in my mind as I take notes, drive, try to read my construction textbook. If I read the right Wikipedia page, I watch through the movie with my partner, knowledge of what happens next sapping out the fear. But all I know about this movie is that it's in the Saw franchise, squeezed between 1, which I've seen, and 2, which I've been too scared to.

The attendant who takes our tickets doesn't cock an eyebrow and say, "you know this a horror movie, right?" My parents aren't here to discourage me. My siblings are happy to enable me, to sit next to me and share popcorn as we take our seats. It strikes me as ironic to nestle into the plush electric recliner of the movie theater, to get so comfortable to watch people be poked and proded and sliced open.

A little over two hours later, we stumble out of the theater, reeling from the blood-boarding and debating the merits of the Jigsaw killer's humanization. I've been scared, and disgusted, and heartbroken, by the forty minute sequence of a man, serial killer or not, coping with his terminal cancer diagnosis, by the woman whose saved from an attempted assault only by being kidnapped and put in a death trap, by all the things I used to be too scared to watch movies or read books in case they were included. But I don't feel any of those things then, just happy and light, a strange surge of pride in myself. My mind is haunted only in the way it's supposed to be from a horror movie.

We walk past the abandoned shops, and I realize I'm braver than I used to be.