Long Time Lurker, First Time Poster

[WhiteRabbit]

Hello everyone. I've been reading through these forums for several months now, and have decided to finally join up and become a member of your community. I'm not great at introductions, so bear with me.

I'm WhiteRabbit, and I'm a DL (obviously). Like I said before, I've been reading through these forums for quite some time now, but never got around to registering. I tried several weeks ago, but I wasn't able to finish my registration due to an apparent IP block on the server my VPN was routing me through. I travel for work, and live on hotel wifi, so I refuse to even turn my wifi on without my VPN ready to go.

Like many of you (from what I've gathered), this aspect of my life is one of my most heavily guarded secrets, and I think it'll be nice to have a safe place to discuss it (outside of a certain anonymous image board, which I do my best to avoid...).

Aside from my DL interests, I'm a fairly average guy. Eccentric, sure, but I look pretty normal on the outside, at least. I currently work full-time, but I'm planning on eventually going back to school to finish my CSE degree. Computers speak the language of my heart, and programming has always been one of my primary interests, and I'm itching to get back into it (as soon as it becomes financially viable).

I enjoy some semi-casual gaming (my next stop is the nearest Fallout thread), as well as reading (when I find the time) and writing. I've always had a passion for language, and I find writing to be a beautiful form of creation. Lacking any form of artistic ability, writing became my medium for artistic expression. Being able to paint a story with words makes up for all those years I spent struggling with stick figures and watercolors :biggrin:

I'm not really sure what else to put here, so... yeah. I'm looking forward to getting to know you all, and hope to be a meaningful contributor to the community.

 

[amon]

Hello everyone. I've been reading through these forums for several months now, and have decided to finally join up and become a member of your community. I'm not great at introductions, so bear with me.

I'm WhiteRabbit, and I'm a DL (obviously). Like I said before, I've been reading through these forums for quite some time now, but never got around to registering. I tried several weeks ago, but I wasn't able to finish my registration due to an apparent IP block on the server my VPN was routing me through. I travel for work, and live on hotel wifi, so I refuse to even turn my wifi on without my VPN ready to go.

Like many of you (from what I've gathered), this aspect of my life is one of my most heavily guarded secrets, and I think it'll be nice to have a safe place to discuss it (outside of a certain anonymous image board, which I do my best to avoid...).

Aside from my DL interests, I'm a fairly average guy. Eccentric, sure, but I look pretty normal on the outside, at least. I currently work full-time, but I'm planning on eventually going back to school to finish my CSE degree. Computers speak the language of my heart, and programming has always been one of my primary interests, and I'm itching to get back into it (as soon as it becomes financially viable).

I enjoy some semi-casual gaming (my next stop is the nearest Fallout thread), as well as reading (when I find the time) and writing. I've always had a passion for language, and I find writing to be a beautiful form of creation. Lacking any form of artistic ability, writing became my medium for artistic expression. Being able to paint a story with words makes up for all those years I spent struggling with stick figures and watercolors :biggrin:

I'm not really sure what else to put here, so... yeah. I'm looking forward to getting to know you all, and hope to be a meaningful contributor to the community.

Welcome to ADISC.
For someone who claims that they aren't good at introductions, I felt that you did a solid job. I have no clue how programming works, but I know that there are other people here that share the same interest.
When it comes to writing, I'm more on the opposite spectrum. Even though I write a lot, I'm much better at drawing and thinking visually than with words. So I would say that writing is just as artistic as painting. Have you written a lot of stories?

 

[WhiteRabbit]

Welcome to ADISC.
For someone who claims that they aren't good at introductions, I felt that you did a solid job. I have no clue how programming works, but I know that there are other people here that share the same interest.
When it comes to writing, I'm more on the opposite spectrum. Even though I write a lot, I'm much better at drawing and thinking visually than with words. So I would say that writing is just as artistic as painting. Have you written a lot of stories?

I've started quite a few, but I haven't managed to finish many of them. I have a bag specifically for all of my notebooks filled with unfinished stories, thinking that I'll eventually get back them. When I get a new inspiration, I'll grab a notebook and just write for hours... then I set it down and forget about it.

When I was in college, I took several English courses and had to write stories/essays for them, but I always hated writing to someone else's specifications. After I dropped out, I occasionally took "freelance" jobs writing stories for other people's assignments (funny how money worked as a better motivator). I didn't keep many of them, but there was one that I was especially proud of. My buddy's final project for his creative writing course was to write a dual-perspective short story, and he procrastinated until a few days before it was due, so he enlisted my help. When I wrote for people, I charged based on the grade they received. I made $100 for 8 hours of work :biggrin:
The reason I'm proud of that one is that I played with a new style (one that I've since adopted for much of my writing). Most literary fiction is written in the third-person past-tense perspective, as it lends itself best to story-telling. I chose to write the whole thing in first-person present-tense. It took a lot of work to maintain grammatical consistency, but I loved the challenge, and going back through it afterwards to correct any inconsistencies made it something of a fun syntax puzzle (much like debugging program code). Being a dual-perspective narrative, the story ended up focusing on the internal and external facets of the interaction of the two characters. I've always found psychology fascinating, and I loved the experience of creating these two characters, and "designing" their minds and exploring their drives and motivations, and how they influenced their thoughts and behaviors.

When I write, the focus is not so much on the story, but on the character's progression through the story, with the story presented as a catalyst rather than the subject. I tend to write a lot of psychological paranormal/horror, and almost exclusively in present-tense (as it presents the most challenge).

Unrelated question: Is it possible to change text editor box so that text wraps at the edge, rather than continuing indefinitely? A paragraph ends up being one extremely long line, making it difficult to proof-read/edit without loooots of scrolling.

 

[dogboy]

Hi and welcome to the site. I enjoy writing stories as well. The last one I wrote for this site is "The House at the End of the Road". It's in two parts, so if you look for it, start with Part I which may be on page 3 or 4 or the story forum.

I believe "The Great Gatsby" is written in first person, but it's in past tense. Present tense would be harder to do, in my opinion.

 

[Traemo]

Bearing in mind genre is rapidly becoming an out-dated concept, what genre(s) do you prefer to write in?
Also, welcome, welcome, welcome

 

[WhiteRabbit]

Bearing in mind genre is rapidly becoming an out-dated concept, what genre(s) do you prefer to write in?
Also, welcome, welcome, welcome

Paranormal, often with a horror edge. I've always found fringe-science incredibly interesting. I also like to explore the mythologies of ancient civilizations (especially Egyptian, though not exclusively) in a modern context, as well as secret societies and religious sects/cults.