A Place to Put the Words

Writing is a big part of my life. That’s a generic start to an essay, but it’s the truth, and pointing it out shows that I can edit well, too. Writing is how I earn an income, it’s the passion I’ve had since I was in single digits, and it’s what I’m doing right this second, staring at a screen as the words appear before me, for the sheer fun of it. I like to express thoughts and feelings through this medium, and I’d love to say that I’ve made a decent go at expressing those things in even better ways. I do words good, it seems.

Making it your life—the way you survive—does come with certain costs; what was a huge love became the way I pay the bills. People always tell you not to make your hobby your job, because you’ll fall out of love with those things; I haven’t exactly fallen out of love with writing (or gaming, which is the other half of the thing), but it’s certainly affected how I interpret things. Back in the day, when I had a big feeling, I’d write about it. One of the pieces I am absolutely most proud of is a short essay about the grief I felt when I had to withdraw from a PhD programme. If those events happened to me today, I don’t think I’d write that piece for myself; I’d pitch it to editors. There are pieces I’ve got in my head—about my MS diagnosis changing my perception of disability; about discovering a love for cocktail creation; about gardening; about love; about learning how to use a camera from 2007 in this modern age; and about the value of silence—that would likely remain in my head until I found someone kind enough to commission them.

I’ve decided that I don’t like that impulse. I miss writing things for the fun of it. Yes, I’d love to write those things for money—money is how you gain access to goods and services, after all—but it almost feels like I’ve fallen out of love with the idea of writing for fun or lost the habit of letting it be pointless. It’s even happened with fiction. For over two decades I’ve been writing stories, and the moment I realised I was finally going to finish a story, the story became a manuscript, and the manuscript has gone through editing, and I’m currently in the query trenches, and the related stories are now part of a series, and I’ve turned my longest-living hobby into a second potential income stream. I still love that work and all its foibles, but it stings a bit, in the same way games journalism has turned every new game into an exercise in wondering which mechanics could become guides and which characters deserve features of their own.

Naturally, my solution to realising that I’d made writing too goal-oriented was to buy a domain, build a website, organise it into categories, and give myself somewhere else to publish. I made this website to help myself remember why I am this person in the first place. Yes, this is a contradiction in terms, almost like I’m giving myself yet another professional outlet to write for, but I’m consciously trying to avoid that. I’ll still pitch the ideas that feel like they belong somewhere to the homes they could thrive in, but I’ve come to the realisation that no piece requires permission from an editor to actually get written, and this is where I’ll have fun writing them. This place doesn’t need to prove that I can write professionally; I’ve already got plenty of evidence for that. It can just be somewhere I write things because they’re funny, emotional, interesting or worth sharing with friends. It’s just a place with a nicer look and links that can also be useful to anyone looking for the professional Ryan.

I have an old blog. What used to be curatedcritiques.wales is now curatedcritiques.wordpress.com because I didn’t want to continue paying for a domain name for a site I didn’t use. I’m keeping it around because it’s an archive, and there’s a decent chunk of stuff that I’m still quite proud of there, but I’m starting fresh here. Curated Critiques Ryan was a person who loved writing and wanted to be a writer. These days, I feel confident in saying that I am a writer who doesn’t need to prove himself so much—and, to be very fair, could use something a bit more professional; a site with my name in the URL, a structure that doesn’t hurt the eyes, and perhaps fewer articles about how attractive the dragons from Spyro are.

Fewer, certainly not zero, depending on how the next game goes.

All that to say, hello, welcome, etcetera. I’m writing this to have something to read in many years’ time, to remind myself why I made this in the first place. I don’t know what my next big essay will be, but I know that in a few hours, I’ll have a second piece up and it’ll be about a stupid Pokémon game that I love very much. That feels nice, and that’s rather the point.