Greetings from Finland

Hello, my name is Axel and I'm a 19-year old guy from southern Finland.

I stumbled here a few days ago and immediately began the transformation process to become one of you. So far it has been successful. Soon I won't remember anything from the time before this.

Writing is a very recent interest of mine that was sparked when a writing craft video by Brandon Sanderson randomly popped on my Youtube's feed. This happened some months ago and I have since watched the lecture series through a couple times as well as read about the writing craft in length. The daunting task of writing a full sized 250k-word long story, that incorporates all aspects of good storytelling and is coherent, feels so exciting. Something about the endless challenge and thousands of hours of practice is almost taunting me and calling me to tackle the damn thing.

I'm drawn to activities that offer the possibility of getting good at them, for example painting and playing the drums. About six months ago I just got an idea that I want to create a picture of a scene I had in my mind for years. Of course, since I'd never really done anything related to visual arts I had no supplies so I went looking for digital alternatives and got excited about digital painting. I have since then been practicing the fundamental skills of picture making and tried to make my own works and so forth. The technical aspects and theories are very interesting to me in painting, but the world of storytelling is even more technical, so you can imagine my excitement to start on this road.

My other interests are physics and philosophy, as well as playing the drums I mentioned. Another fine example of activity that is all about developing muscle memory over long periods of time. I simply decided one day, about 18 months ago, that I finally want to play the drums. So I bought a used set of electronic drums and started to practice playing them on my own.

The goals I've set for my writing is to develop my skills to the level that I can write a novel that can be published traditionally. I'm not planning to do this for living so there are no pressures from that, but I do set them for myself otherwise (the goal). So far I've written quite little, around 5000 words or so towards my first draft, but I've re-written the first 3000 words or so to incorporate some of the skills I've learned even during that short time, in hopes to post it for a critique as soon as possible. I feel that doing that would be the most effective way of getting on the right rail as soon as possible. Also, last night I wrote a critique here http://www.scribophile.com/authors/vito-gutilla/works/unbound/48802/#comment-300399 and got an awesome response from the author that really boosted my morale. Understanding the concepts is what I initially aim to do, putting them into my own work is alot more difficult, though.

Music-wise im into black metal and its endless subgenres.

Sorry for rambling a bit, but those who bothered to read through it should get a pretty good idea of how I'm like. Glad to be here among you.

 

I'll gladly put up a thread with some links to youtube videos for people interested. Ever since I discovered black metal I could no longer find anything special from songs of other genres, not even other metal that I listened to before. The variety this offers is very baffling and offers inspiration to all directions.