The Mission

When I created Smudged Thoughts back in 2016, I had no clue what I was doing. I was a smol, young writer with pterodactyl-sized dreams, and the thought of claiming a piece of the internet for my own intrigued me greatly.

I’ve read a million times over that writing is a solitary act, but when I was a teenage-writer scribbling out stories in battered notebooks, those words cut deeper than ever. For years I’d been writing story after story, flopping back and forth between manuscripts without ever making much of a dent in any, but I had yet to meet anyone who had the same passion for storycraft as I did. I tried converting my friends, my family, my stuffed animals. . . Finally, I came to the conclusion that I was a lone reed. I, at least, loved writing, and that would have to be enough.

And then along came NaNoWriMo.

Simply put, NaNoWriMo was the catalyst smol Kenzie needed to get her act together. I’d spent enough time waffling between stories–now was my chance to finally graduate from “occasional scribbler” to a true, ink-blooded “writer”. NaNoWriMo brought with it a whole new mess of self-discovery, but along with the chaos came a beautiful revelation:

there were hundreds, thousands of other writers out there in the universe . . . writers just like me.

There’s really nothing quite like discovering you’re not alone. All my life I’d wanted to be a part of a writing community, and now there was one right there at my fingertips, one simple click away. NaNoWriMo was a wonderful place to start–the NaNo forums were where I made my first ever writing friend, in fact–but there was something inside of me that still craved more. I wanted a space on the internet to call my own, a place to hold my thoughts–however chaotic and crazy they might seem. I wanted to start a blog.

And thus, Smudged Thoughts was born. A few months later, and I had finally carved a section of Cyberspace out for my very own. It wasn’t perfect–goodness knows it probably wasn’t even good. But as I already said, I had absolutely not clue what I was doing. And I loved every single moment of it. There’s something magical about having absolutely no clue what you’re doing until you’ve done it, and I think that’s exactly what Smudged Thoughts is–one giant glob of chaotic creativity that’s ever-evolving, ever-changing, and forever my smol precious child.

So what’s our mission? What’s Smudged Thoughts here to do? Simple, really:

I want this blog to spread positivity and pixie dust throughout Cyberspace like wildfire. I want to share my writings with the world, and encourage you to do the same. But most of all, I want this to be a community of writers like me–writers who felt they never really fit in anywhere else.

So bring your chaos, bring your crazy, bring some cookies (there is much flinging of those ’round these parts), and bring a pitchfork (mine’s named Rupert), because while you may have come here to simply poke around before toddling off to bigger and better things, I want you to leave feeling like you’re able to conquer the world.

Because you can conquer the world, my friend, if only you have the courage to try.

— KENZIE

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