I like to believe that my writings are a reflection of my own personality, my own interests and indifferences, the political and social stances that I take in life, and the problems I was dealing with at the time of writing. I don’t consider it a surprise that I myself was going through a lonely and depressed phase when I wrote “Aleksandr” back in October.

If you’re not a formalist, you’ll agree with me that you can learn a lot about an author just by reading his or her written work. Sure, most stories consist of fictional characters and made-up content, but even with fiction a lot of personal stuff leaks through to the surface.

So, to reflect on what makes me tick, I took some time apart from my busy, busy life (right) and went on an organising field trip. Divided in main themes, I listed everything I have written since September. This is the not-so-shocking conclusion:

Prose (short stories only) [11]

Depression

• Two short stories whose main theme is “depression.” But if the theme is taken to a broader sense (so not just main, but also secondary theme etc.), the total of short stories amounts to four (out of eleven).

Joy & Pleasure

• Four shorts, generally about very random topics, not one specific. To give an example, one is about a kooky village with a dictatorial mayor, while the most recent is about an English duchess living in Paris, writing a letter to the Virgin Mary on the day Napoléon entered Paris after his escape from Elba. Yeah, not really comparable pieces of work.

Loneliness

• One, but this should actually fall under the main theme “depression.” I separated it because I feel loneliness is not just something depressing, at least not to me. In the short story, loneliness (or better yet, desolation) is quite separate from depression. That’s why.

Self-discovery

• Three short stories, which is more than I had thought before-hand. Though to be completely honest, one of them isn’t finished yet. And that one might even have to be shifted to “prose (novels)” if the story gets too long.

Violence

• One short, which is not all that strange. Being of a nonaggression nature myself, I actually do tend to write about violence and war a lot, but still, not a theme I’m all that experienced in.

Poetry [34]

Depression

• Four poems, which again is an expandable number. Quickly glancing over the rest of my poems, I would say that approximately fourteen poems at least somewhat touch the theme “depression.”

Friendship

• One poem, and only because I had no way of fitting this one into the rest of the themes.

Joy & Pleasure

• Four poems, including one of my favourites, “Spring.” Most of these poems are about jocund topics.

Love

• Sixteen! I had no idea I wrote that much about love, well not until I did this listing-thing. Though “love” usually means happy, smily love, I also mean the dark side of love. Which is a very specific type of depression, so that’s why it’s not placed there.

Religion

• Seven, which is more than the “Joy & Pleasure” poems, for one reason: these religious poems are usually quite spiteful and a lot of them written in (pure) hate. No happy poems, these.

Warfare

• One poem, about a battle at sea. I wanted to place it under the main theme “Joy & Pleasure” because it’s a light poem, but a separate theme was more suitable for a strictly marina poem.

Overall, a nice representation I do think so. In general, the poems reflect my personality and interest a little bit better I think, because writing a poem takes less time than writing a good short story (rewriting, now that’s a world apart) and I have also been more in the poetry mood lately. Most of my poems were written in November, but only one of my short stories (the letter to St Mary) was.

When I have some spare time (oh, my schedule is always so full) I’ll post some more poems and short stories here.