Some 5 years ago, my first computer began to malfunction. In frustration, I decided to reformat the hard drive, losing its contents, but saving my computer. Prior to this event, I had a pastime of writing short stories. I would regularly sit down, write something simple, and save it, intending to return and clean it up at some point. Sadly, a reasonable sized collection of material was lost, and along with it I lost my enthusiasm for writing. Losing so much work was heartbreaking, and I soon moved on to cultivating other talents.
For the past 2 years now, I have been living in the woods, working with children. Often, this kind of work can be very inspiring, but it can also be extremely draining on both my physical and emotional constitutions. Furthermore, I recently was enlightened to the fact that I am not alone in noticing how much I am affected when life gets too stressful. There are a lot of people out there who count on me to be my best all of the time. I want to be enthusiastic and energetic in all aspects of my life, and I don't want to have daily stress diminish the kind of person I know I can be. I am creating this Blogger in hopes that having the means by which to "publish" my work will prompt me to return to taking time to calm down and write more often. After all, what good is an incredibly inspirational lifestyle if you don't use that inspiration now and then.
I chose my blog's name because I am not a famous writer. I do, however, have a reasonably strong command over the language after several years of English study, and a few writing workshops full of vicious critics (some of whom, I hope, will read this.) Charles Dickens' first publication was an unpaid compilation of short stories titled Sketches by Boz. (You can feel free to look up the story behind that title on your own time.)
My hope for this page is to capture that spirit of writing for the purpose of writing. As Dickens wasn't paid for anything in Sketches by Boz, I don't intend to be paid for anything in Sketches by Hoz. This is just me writing because I want to write. There may be nonfiction writing, essays on a topic of interest, short fiction, or developments on and future chapters of said short fiction which build it into longer fiction. My purpose, however is simple: to write, and to have others read what I have written.
I therefore welcome you to Sketches by Hoz. I look forward to writing more in the future, and for the opportunity to hear feedback from anyone who reads my material. I will try to post as much as I can, so check back regularly, and don't forget to comment. I always appreciate criticism.
