leigh ann

oct 17, 2023

I knew I always wanted to write. I always thought I would be fine writing for myself. Believe it or not, I often go back and read my old stories. Even the ones that I think are really bad. Because even still, they’re pretty fun. The key is if I wait long enough, I tend to forget the finer details.

Only recently did I begin to think about sharing my work. It began with my partner. It moved on to my friends and coworkers. Instead of sending everybody a separate copy I began to post the writing online and shared one link.

The thing about sharing writing with readers is that they also get excited when they read. They become impassioned and invested. Slowly, I began to love sharing my work because I knew that other people looked forward to reading it as much as I did. Warner (2002) captures this feeling perfectly when he wrote that, “Strangers are less strange if you can trust them to read as you read”. Which I think I’m beginning to do.

Another reason I never shared my work is because I believed it had to be perfect before another person could see it. Of course, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing is perfect therefore my work will never be perfect therefore it will never be shared with anybody. I self-sabotaged.

I’m not sure what exactly fueled my flame to finally go public but here I am exposing my work and myself to the world. To you who might be reading it.

Maybe it’s because my friends kept pestering me for news of their favourite character (particularly Stephenelle and all her texts about Matthew). Maybe it’s because I subscribed to so many author’s newsletters and love seeing their daily updates (so many book recommendations from Katee Robert). Maybe this was always the path and I just took it slow.

Of course, I could have just decided to make this website, post my work, and leave. But I found that I couldn’t. It wasn’t me.

I’m a huge fan of fanfiction. I have fanfiction out there in the world. To this day, I open Archive of Our Own and hit up the “Mokuton User Haruno Sakura” tag because I’m a critic and Kishimoto did her (all his female characters) wrong.

Do you know what one of the best parts of fanfiction is, at least to me? The author’s notes! When you scroll past the good/bad/okay/just-alright/interesting-idea-but-could-be-better content and get to that page break? You get into the mind of the writer. Tell me why you wrote this story. Tell me what made you choose one character over another. Drag the author through the mud and say you can do it better.

Anybody can write, I think. But sometimes I stick with a story because of the person behind it. I love when a new chapter email hits my inbox and the author let’s me know that school is whooping their ass or that they just had a baby or a wedding or even learned to make a new pasta dish. I’m more patient waiting weeks, even months, for a new chapter when the note at the end reminds me that these are people. People writing in their free time, for free, just for the sheer enjoyment of it. Just like I love to read the process behind the work, I hope others feel the same. To be honest, it feels egotistical to want to people to be interested in what I’m doing, much less my work.

You also might have noticed that I have comments open on my posts. That’s because I want people to comment. I want commenters to talk whether it’s to me or to each other. Engage with the work or comment on the weather. Vent if they want. Of course, that leaves my work open to scrutiny but that’s the risk of being open and online. Vulnerability.

Sometimes, the worst of people comes out online. That’s true. But so is the opposite. And I think when you’re open and honest online most people tend to respond to that. I want to breed that kind of authenticity with my website.

Sherry Turkle (1996) said it best, “There are many Sherry Turkles”. There are also many Leighann Nicoles. All of them are coming together to create this website. My writing is intertwined with my life. My life influences my writing and my writing influences back my life. A mixed blog/projects website is the perfect way to express that. I’m not stuck to texts or picture or videos or word counts. I don’t have to make fancy edits or slap on filters to satisfy some unknown algorithm. I’m not stuck with being a “bookstagrammer” or a “booktuber” or a “simmer”. The only requirement for this website is to be me.

This website is my open honesty. This is my work at it’s good/bad/okay/just-alright/interesting-idea-but-could-be-better. It’s also my life, slightly curated but no less real. One cannot exist without the other.

References:

• Turkle, Sherry. “Who Am We?” WIRED, 1 Jan. 1996.
• Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2002. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1qgnqj8. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.

sept 19, 2024

once again, coming back to work i forgot and being surprised at what i’ve written. almost a year later and i still have to agree with younger me. why am i sharing my work? for validation for joy for the sake of putting myself out there?

the question of writing just for the sake of publishing has already been answered. publishing is a distance crazy impossible dream when i grew up. and i still sat down and wrote. i come back to my old stories (manuscripts maybe even?) and reread and reread. even fanfiction. i have like a 30k zutara fanfic i wrote in high school that never touched the internet.

but i still wrote it.

and cried when i thought i deleted it.

and that’s what’s real. published or not i don’t think i can survive if i don’t write. i need it like water.