Category Archives: Kendra’s Thoughts

Kendra's Thoughts, Letters

A Letter To Myself – 32 Year Old to 22 Year Old

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To preface this letter, I want to say that this idea was inspired by the song “Crave” by Paramore. It’s really put a lot of my past in perspective simply by making me look at it from where I am now.

Dear 22 Year Old Me,

Life is tough. Right now, you’re struggling with depression and not understanding why you aren’t seeing things the way those around you are. Two years out of college, living far from your safety net. Every day is something new, something unpredictable.

I want to tell you, you’ll be okay. You can make it through this and come out stronger. Indulge your curious nature and learn all you can about the world around you. Expand your passions and embrace them. Take it all one step at a time, but do not be afraid to ask for help.

When you get to where we are now, you’re going to look back on these ten years and realize… You don’t want to change a second of it. After all you will learn about yourself, after all you will overcome, you will come out of this stretch a stronger person.

Embrace the changes as they come. Learn and grow, every chance you get. I know you can, because I know you will. We get to this point not by hiding away when things get hard, but by taking the problems head on and refusing to back down. To quote the song that inspired this letter, “Look up and see a reflection of someone who never gave way to the pain.”

There will be days where it seems better to just give up. But remember that the best option and the easy option aren’t always the same. Giving up is easy, but pushing through and growing is far more rewarding.

The world is going to get scarier. A lot of things out of your control will change around you and even out from under you. While you may not have all the tools to handle it right now, you will when they hit. No matter how scared you are, keep moving forward and let your friends, family, and faith guide you. Be open to the changes in your perspective, and to the perspectives of those around you. That will give you everything you need to make it through.

You’re going to find love, and heartbreak. You’re going to gain very important people to your life, and you’re going to lose some too. These are the rules of the game, and you can’t change them. But how you handle them will change everything.

Remember that you are loved, you underestimate yourself even more than your opponents do, and you are your biggest obstacle. You can also be your biggest ally if you just allow yourself to try.

Keep learning, keep growing, and keep looking out for those around you. Making a difference even for just one person is worth all the effort.

Love always,
32 Year Old Me

Kendra's Thoughts, Updates

Fighting Through Blocks, and Ideas for This Site’s Future

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Today has been… insane. I went to work, had a normal morning after a tough day yesterday, and went to lunch with my brother while he was in town running errands.

Then, a notification hit my phone. Today, I’ve gotten 85 views so far. This is over double my last highest, from June!

While I’ve been able to write a few things and get a few ideas since June’s post, I haven’t made any progress on my current projects. This happens even to professional and published writer’s.

I actually had the pleasure to meet a published author, Brian Paone, at a book release for his newest book, These Walls Still Talk, last month. We met last year while he was finishing writing it, and I got to ask him about the publishing industry. He was really cool to talk to, as an aspiring author, and my mom and I picked up a few of his books while there. I mentioned struggling with where I’m at in my book, and Brian gave me a bit of insight into his own rough areas while writing. It’s really cool to know a published author has his own struggles with the art form.

All this fan-girling (I am a huge fan at this point, quite honestly) is just to say… that interaction helped my confidence as a writer a bit. I’ve come to realize that, maybe, by documenting my struggles with finishing and publishing my first book, I may similarly be able to help inspire and boost the confidence of future aspiring authors.

I’m going to try a few new things to help de-stress myself in the hopes that will help loosen up the writer’s block, including actually taking up journaling. While my current sights are only on publishing a book and certainly not on getting famous or making loads of money, I still want to use what I learn as I go to help others who stand beside me now in their own journeys or come after me in the future.

If I one day gain even a small fan following, I want to be able to help my fans like Brian has now done for me.

On that note, here are my thoughts on this blog going forward.

Right now, and honestly for the foreseeable future, this blog is rough and raw. Aside from typos I catch after posting or small updates that need made, I don’t edit what goes up here. It all flows from the brain to the keyboard as is. If you’ve read a few non-story posts, I’m sure you’ll have noted the rambly nature of them.

Story posts are similar. While I might edit a tad as I write it, all story posts that go up on this site are first drafts. I only edit later if I see a typo that’s bothering me or a phrasing comes off way wrong for what I meant, but never huge content changes.

I plan to continue that style here for now. It may change as I continue to develop as a writer, but while this blog remains a hobby and a side project that I cannot afford to devote more time to, that’s what I will stick with.

I am going to start brainstorming a few smaller projects like Taking Back the Kingdom to post here as dedicated blog stories. Shorter than a typical novel and unedited, but something to entertain people. I don’t have ideas for that plan yet, but once I have one I hope to be able to post an update a month to it.

I haven’t had a good monologued dialogue gor quite a while, so Shorty and I may be back with those monthly or bi-monthly as well. I haven’t decided yet, as writing those takes a lot of energy for me.

But the important point is… I want to give this blog more energy, more time, and more love. I can’t continue to grow by waiting for eyes and then creating content for them. I have to start having the content ready for when these small waves in viewership happen, in the hopes that either someone will come back for more or something I write sticks with them in a way that improves their lives.

Thank you for reading, and if you stick around for the journey ahead, I hope I live up to your expectations. (And go check out Brian at his link above, show him some love for me!)

Kendra's Thoughts, Updates

Growth of a Writer – How I Have Grown and Improved in My Craft

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Something I’m learning as I put actual effort into writing a project that I actually, truly, completely intend to one day publish is that… writing is a lot harder when it isn’t just for fun.

I’ve been writing in some form or another for fun since elementary school. One of my earliest memories of writing as for a writing club in the 3rd or 4th grade. (It was a spooky ghost story that I do not at all remember the plot of. But there was a skeleton key, I remember that much.) I wasn’t super consistent on specific projects as a little kid, but I did do it.

At some point, I found role-playing through Neopets forums. I made my first OC based on Naruto, and she has evolved and stayed with me since.

Spoiler alert, it’s me, Shorty Scorch, I’m the OC. And yes, I am still here.

Shorty, this was meant to be a solo post.

I am fully aware. And I decided… nah, this will be both of us. I’m a large part of your adventure and journey, it feels fair I get to be here for this.

Well, I guess this does at least show what I mean by you’ve evolved and stayed with me. Shorty’s not tied to the Naruto-verse anymore, and has her own stand-alone world that I’m developing.

She still does some roleplays on occasion, though only with one person at this point. It’s a lot of work to find stable writing partners that want to write the same thing as you.

I suppose that brings up a good point. I should clarify, the roleplaying I do is game or writing, nothing more than that. And not the “pretend you’re this and reacting to that” kind of writing, either. Where two or more people write a story together. It’s basically D&D without the dice and DM.

And without the complicated rules, you’re literally just trying to make a fun story with another person or people.

Anyway, I got into roleplaying, and I started writing my first story. It didn’t get finished, and I don’t even remember where exactly it was going. I do recall it was a fantasy story about a group of girls discovering that not only are dragons real, but they each had a dragon to bond with.

From there, my stories evolved and grew as I learned. Going back and writing some of my earliest work I can find, I can see the growth.

Doesn’t mean she’s the best writer in the world now, just that she’s better than she once was.

Pretty much. I’ve stopped comparing myself to other writers I read, and started just comparing myself to myself. If my writing is improving over time, then I’m doing my job as a writer correctly by learning and growing.

I’m currently working on my worldbuilding skills. I know I also need to improve with regards to descriptions, of characters and places. Action scenes are also on my list. And pacing is something I will always need to improve on. After all, some stories need to be super fast paced, and some a bit slower. It all depends on the kind of story you’re trying to tell.

She also needs to start figuring out editing and reworking, if she wants to publish anything she’s currently working on.

True. And Just Super might stop being posted from this point, depending. I do want to publish it as a book, and I don’t want to put the whole story online ahead of time. But, I haven’t decided yet. What goes on the blog is a rough draft, after all.

All of this is to say… If you’re interested in something, get started. You may be surprised where you end up. Am I some huge successful author, with several best selling books out and making money? No, nor do I expect to be. I’m going to be happy having even just one book published in my lifetime, even if I have to do it myself.

But I am better than I was yesterday. I sometimes wonder how good an artist I could have been, had I not decided I was trash and put zero effort into improving. I will never, however, wonder how good of a writer I could have been, because this is my passion. I’ve loved writing for a long time. And as a little kid, I never could have imagined I would actually get this far, having my own blog that actually gets read by other people.

Thanks for reading, and following us down memory lane. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to post a follow-up to this about where I’ve grown from here.

Kendra's Thoughts, Updates

Pushing Your Boundaries And Setting Ever Higher Goals

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I finally completed a full story. Yes, it’s all still in a rough draft form, but people on the internet have read it and I’ve gotten decent reception for it. At least, decent if you go by the fact I get few visitors and even fewer likes.

Either way, it was a huge win for me. For several people, maybe even many, my goal of finishing just one story may have seemed small. I imagine that for people who have been writing for a long time, people passionate about writing whether they’ve ever published anything or not, they fully understood my desire for a completed story and perhaps once had a similar struggle.

The whole reason I set that simple goal was because I was scared. I was terrified that I would never see any of my ideas to completion, doomed to forever begin an engaging and exciting story and stop just as things were starting to take shape.

Taking Back the Kingdom was my first completed story, mostly because it was so easy to write. I gave myself a prompt and, while the story evolved heavily away from it, knowing the goal I was after in the beginning really helped me develop the characters and the story line better than I’m used to.

This is also one of very few stories that I’ve started specifically from a prompt, rather than other stimuli. In fact, most of the stories I begin come to me as ideas I have based off of dreams I remember. I have three different projects I want to work on right now that are also based on either dreams or daydreams.

That brings me to setting a new goal, a bigger goal. You see, while one of those three projects is likely one I won’t start at all, the other two I feel have potential. The tricky thing for me is that they both feel like multi-book projects. Hell, one of them is already a minimum of seven books if I do it how I want to. The other one I currently only have ideas for two books for, but that project is a much more vague concept to me.

Now, as I work on either of these projects, I’m not sure if they’ll end up on here at all. They’re much larger and more involved, and the writing I’ve done for the seven book project has been more fragmented than things I’ve posted here have been. In fact, I already have segments written from four of the books.

I’ve currently titled that project “Hero’s Spirit”, though that’s certainly subject to change. It’s set to follow a total of six teens in as they grow, and possibly save the world. I know, not the most original description, but I don’t want to give too much out about it on the internet. I think I’ve already given a few descriptions of it on the blog, but I think I’ve kept them relatively vague.

The reason for that vagueness is that I intend for these to actually be books, books that I publish and sell. While I’ve been a bit slow to fully work on the project, I’m allowing myself to focus more on it now that I’ve finished another project.

Now, that’s not to say that I won’t be working on any other projects in the meantime. For example, I would like to revisit and possibly finish my Minecraft fanfiction, Journey in a Strange World (or whatever the hell I called it) at some point in the near future. Originally, that was going to be a journal that was entries long. It was also originally started as a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo/NaNo) project, and my goal was to write about an entry a day for it. We see how well that went.

I think trying to stretch that out to 30 entries is going to be slow and tedious at this point, so I’m probably only going to need a few more entries and the epilogue to actually finish that story. But, that is another goal I have, to finally finish off that project.

Likewise, I will in time be revisiting Nameless, another NaNo project of mine. Much like Taking Back the Kingdom, that one started as a prompt, and I still think it would be a fun challenge to finish.

Revisiting both of these is going to take time, however. I need to evaluate where I can go from where I ended with them, decide if my plans for them need changing, or if I feel like I can truly finish them in the way they deserve. In the mean time, I might try a short story here or there to give the blog a little more variety, and I do intend to start a few more Monologued Dialogues before long as well.

I’m also toying with the idea of donation incentives, should someone wish to offer monetary support to Short and Scorch. Specifically, I’m considering setting it up so that if someone donates, they can request that I do a short story for a specific prompt they give me, within reason. There are certain things I’m not knowledgeable to write about, and others that I simply refuse to write about. I would also have to work out if this would be a donation for things to be posted to the blog only, or if I’d allow the option to have them submitted privately to the donator.

I also have to contend with the fact that I, quite frankly, don’t know that I’m talented enough that anyone would even pay me money to write them a short story. Likewise comes the problem that, should someone actually pay me to write a story for them, how easy would it be for them to try to pass it off as their own if I allow the option to give them only to the donator?

Between the confidence issue and the logistics, it’s likely an idea that won’t happen unless I begin to really get popular for some reason. It’s more likely that I finally get my act together and start producing videos for the TikTok account I created for the blog. I have plenty of ideas for it, just nothing I’ve actually taken the time to make yet. (If I do make videos, they’re not going to be about my stories unless they’re updates. They’ll just be me and Shorty, and probably some representations of struggles from the past few years as I battle depression and self-image issues.)

Really, this has all been a long and ranty way of saying: Now that I’ve completed one big thing I’ve been worried about never doing, I’m looking at doing bigger and better things. I’m no longer thinking about projects in terms of “If I can finish it” but instead of “When I finish it.” Hero’s Spirit and the other multi-book project, which I’ve currently dubbed “Rose Queen,” are both projects I know that I can finish. Rose Queen might not ever come to fruition only because I’m not as settled on how good of a story it would actually be, not because I don’t think I can do something as ambitious as multiple books for the same series.

I would be willing to bet that, should I ever publish anything as a full book, it will likely be my Hero’s Spirit project. And while I likely won’t post it on the blog as I have other stories, I don’t see why I can’t give updates on it and possibly post excerpts as I work on it, so my readers can get a sneak-peak on what kind of project it is I’m working on.

So, as I proceed to set bigger, loftier goals, I hope that those who have come back again and again and shown support through following the blog or leaving a like on various posts will continue to enjoy my stories, reviews, and discussions with myself. I have a couple of posts I’m working on now that I think people will enjoy, including a far overdue review of Nerd Fitness Academy and a new Monologued Dialogue.

Thank you to those who have been here for any of the journey to my first completed story, and to those who have given me a chance to entertain them so far. I hope you like what I have yet to come.

Kendra's Thoughts, Taking Back the Kingdom, Updates

Taking Back The Kingdom Reflections, And What Comes Next

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With the official end of TBtK written and posted, I wanted to take a quick look back at the process of writing it, and to talk about what might come next.

First, I want to thank everyone who read and enjoyed my first completed story project. I may decide to edit and publish it one day as a book. All I currently know is I have no intention of a sequel to this project. I really didn’t ever intend one, and I didn’t give myself much setup for one.

I want to talk briefly about the process that creating this story took. It started with a prompt: What if the hero we follow is actually the villian?

As readers will note, that premise did not hold through the book. I could have kept our main character antagonistic to the king, but it just didn’t feel like it fit the young man I’d written. I may revisit that prompt one day, I may not. It was a lot harder to try to write convincingly than I thought.

The reason it took me so long to finish was my difficulty I’m deciding how to end it. Much like our main character, I had several paths to choose from. He could have simply returned home and bowed out. Or, I could have had him single-handedly talk down the rebels. That felt like such a cop out, and very unbelievable, so I ditched it pretty quickly. Eli could have died I’m the fighting, or fought for the king and become a war hero. Ultimately, I did choose this route, but I decided to leave his fate to the readers. That also felt like a cop out, but a more satisfying one.

I’m personally satisfied with the ending of the story, and how I got there. Each chapter was written and posted without any major editing or anyone reviewing it first. That alone was pretty intimidating, as I had no way of knowing how anyone would receive it. I just wrote what felt most correct and fitting at the time and rolled with it.

As for what’s next, I’m not 100% certain. I’ve got a couple of potential projects to work on, and some on here I’d like to continue. I don’t know just how frequently I’ll be posting for a while as is. Life’s pretty busy at the moment, and what free time I do have to devote to projects will likely be dominated by the biggest project I’ve ever attempted, which I don’t intend to put on the blog in its entirety.

That project is currently planned to be 7 books in total. I don’t want to go into too much detail about it here, but it will be a book based in a world of magic, interdimensional travel, and an upcoming war.

I will be trying to finish off the Journey story this year, however. I know how I want that to end, I just have to get it there.

I want to seriously thank all of my readers and my handful of followers. This has been an amazing accomplishment for me, someone who’s been writing since they were 7ish yet never finished a full story. I hope some of all of you will stick around for more of this journey, and support me as I continue to grow as a writer.

Let me know what you thought of TBtK. I’d love to hear thoughts on the ending and the story as a whole. Did you read it from the start? Did you find it part way through and go back? Was the ending satisfying for you, as a reader? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for sticking with me. Let’s hope the next projects are just as fun!

Kendra's Thoughts

Magic Vs Tech – A Nerd’s Personal Choice

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I was thinking recently about writing that I do, writing that a friend does, and writing we do together. And I came to a realization or two, which I’ll share now.

Now, I haven’t read a ton of this friend’s solo writing. Mostly, I’ve just read some of her NaNoWriMo projects. But, that’s been enough to help me with something. Because, I realized that our writing we do together, our role plays, are almost always based in magical worlds or worlds like our own. We really don’t do sci-fi writing. Occassionally, we’ll go down a more technologically advanced route.

My own writing is much the same. I’ll tend more towards magic, demons, and the supernatural despite being a techie. I can’t speak for my friend and why she also seems to tend towards that side of things, but I’ve been considering why I might.

To understand my thought process when thinking about this, you have to know a little more about me. As I said, I’m a techie. I love tech, new and old, and playing with it and learning how it works. I went to college for computer networking, then got a job doing computer programming so I could understand all sides of how a computer works. If I could afford to, I’d find a good, old fashioned typewriter for my rough drafts. (I really love the sound of a good typewriter, same with mechanical keyboards.)

I also love to write. You may have gathered this, if you’ve been around here before or seen any of my other posts. I love the sound of pencil on paper, to the point that I will simply write the alphabet out over and over when I’m stressed or need to clear my mind. It’s soothing, that soft scratching noise, as is the smooth glide of pen or pencil on paper.

Writing goes hand in hand with reading, in a way, too. Both give me an escape into the related world, and escape from the insanity and fear and anger of the world today. But then, that begs the question: If I love tech, if I’m a techie, then why do I prefer to write about magic and worlds with less tech than ours, and read medieval fantasy?

I think it’s because I love to learn. I want to learn everything I can. I’ve yet to find a field in which I have no interest. Mechanics, lockpicking, art, music, voice acting, game creation (both video and board), cooking, aeronautics, science of all kinds, tech of all kinds, and the list goes on.

This is part of why I love the Great Courses, now Wonderium, so much. There are so many different things for me to learn about, just by listening to lectures. (And so much more, now. They’ve expanded to many extra ways to learn, hence the name change. Seriously, def check it out if you haven’t.)

But, I think this is also why I prefer magic. I understand tech. I may not understand exactly how each piece of tech works, or the science behind it, or what have you. But I do understand tech. Magic is different. The kind of magic in stories, I can’t easily study that. But I can create it, in my own worlds, and I can learn how each story works with it. Where tech is finite and knowable, magic is infinite and impossible to truly master.

Tech is also man, where magic is nature. That might not be a direct connection, but that’s how I feel about it. Man makes tech, but, much like rivers or wind, man can only use magic. Even in the real world, magic is in nature. It’s a natural process. A breath-taking scenery, a chance encounter in the forest with a majestic animal, the first breath of a new life… All of these are magic, but they are made of nature. We have “magic”, too, but it’s really just skills and science that we utilize. The real magic is in the little things. A human can master tech, but a human cannot master magic.

And that’s appealing to me. Something that is both knowable and unknowable, that can be learned but never mastered. Something that one can see, but never hold, never truly have. I love the idea of it.

I also get too drawn into tech, because I get caught up too easily in trying to discern how exactly it works. With magic, I let it do its thing and pull me along for the ride. Tech, I try to hold in and sort it out before we can continue.

Tech, then, becomes another lesson, and magic… Magic becomes an experience.

Magic is also something that I cannot be wrong about. If I’m creating magic, I cannot be incorrect about how my magic works. I cannot create something that would never be possible by the real rules of magic because there are no real rules of magic. Tech, however, I can be wrong about. I can mess something up in a way that slows people down. I know I get tripped up if I’m reading a story and see something that I know just does not work that way. That happens with tech, but it can’t happen with magic.

Magic is different from story to story. People don’t expect you to follow the same rules as a different story unless your story is set in the same world. Tech, people expect tech to follow the rules of the world. They might set aside a few things for futuristic tech that might work that way one day, but there’s a limit to how far you can go with that.

I think this is all pretty good for explaining why I prefer to read and write stories based in magic. In its own way, it can also be explanations for why someone else may prefer tech. But what about you? What do you prefer, and why do you think that is? I bet you’ll find the answer more interesting than you expected.