Blessings from A Girl's Diary

I recently wrote a fairly short story about a girl's diary. I co-wrote it with my friend Riina with help from her friend Val, who to my understanding, is already a legend among internet writers. As I had written it in a girl's perspective and I am anything but a girl, I wasn't really expecting much from it.

Then one day, I got a message from a reader on a website where I posted a similar copy of the story (with the Ragnarok Online terms replaced with real-life stuff)

In the message, a guy was thanking me for convincing him through this story to open up to the girl he liked and then actually quoted this story (LOL I hope he didn't forget the typos) while confessing. Long story short, he got the girl and wanted to thank me for it.

I thanked him in return and told him that true inspiration comes from the heart and that my story could be just another story. I knew he already wanted to confess to that girl and was just looking for a more solid sign - something he found in my story.

It was heartwarming and flattering at the same time. It's this kind of message that makes writing drama/romance stories worth the risk of being mistaken for a female writer - a common woe of the anonymous romance writer online.

How people accepted this story reminds me of why we keep on writing online in the first place. Sure, one can argue that I want to better my skills. Or maybe you can even hear writers who publish their work online saying they're doing it for themselves and they dont care what other people think about it. But that's not all truth.

Truth is, we want to be heard. We may not care what other think of our work, but no writer would not want to see people thinking of thier work. Writing is a form of communication afterall, and nothing satisfies better than getting message across (whatever message it is)

All that, even at the cost of a gender/status bending scenario. Half of the readers in fanfiction.net actually think redkinoko is female. I've already clarified this before but the messages just wont stop coming. *sigh*

To end this post, I would like to quote a good e-friend Kai from fanfiction.net to demonstrate what power a rather convincing story can do to a reader's perception of the author:

omg! this story is the best i have read in a long time! the plot is really expectable [sic], the diary format and the way its written is really good! Rock on! you didnt die did you?

I rest my case.