As a kid I've always dreamed of being a writer when I grew up, but I've generally been too timid to really pursue my goal. But I've been working hard on the technical aspects of writing, and I think my prose and such has gotten much better. However my problem is I just can't find a plot I want to stick with, or one that fires me up enough to make a full story. Any advice?

Just involve something with nanomachines. The rest of the story will write itself.

Wandering_Hero:
snip

As with all things you're new to, start small if you're worried about messing up with the bigger projects.

Write short stories... hell if you want to be writer, do what the job description says and just write. Literally, that's the best advice you can get for now: just write. Anything you come up with during the day, jot it down, expand around it. Don't give a damn how long it is, how little it makes sense, how detailed it is or even how good you think it is because for now, just get into the habit of writing.

If you can't think of a chunky story to dive into the novel side of things, don't force yourself to, primarily because you'll just end up writing something similar to what you've read. Sure, that'd be a great exercise, but it's hardly satisfying. Still, there's nothing wrong with borrowing concepts or certain literary quirks, be it the way to set a scene, how dialogue progresses and so on, just never try to force it, largely because you (the most important reader at the end of the day) will never be satisfied with it.

Since you say that you struggle with a topic, and here you are on a gaming website, I'll give you an exercise you can do any number of times: pick a game that you recently (or long ago, doesn't matter) played; write a short story based on the campaign you played (whether it's an RTS, RPG, FPS or even *hrk* sports). This gives you a starting point and core plot for a story, and it's up to you to flesh it out and input the emotiveness, the viscerality, the intellectuality and cerebral aspects of your writing style. It might also give you an idea of what your writing style suits, in terms of genre. Do this enough and when you finally do come up with an original idea for what you want to write, the narrative and setting will come all the more naturally to you.

Happy writing.

start with what you know I guess.
for example I am an engineer, on it's own that's not particularly interesting but imagine your main character is an engineer aboard a starship exploring new worlds, with experience and research u could make it sound very realistic. Hmm if I was to run with that idea I would probably call my character Isaac and he would be on a mission to restore contact with a mining ship that's... ahh it's already been done ha ha

joking aside writing about something you know about will give you a lot of emotional input, how something felt, smelled etc how people reacted, small details like that. the tricky part is adding an imaginative twist to things to make it interesting.

lastly stay positive you won't knock out a masterpiece in your first attempt, unless your really good of course!

I might try Skchizo suggestions, but yeah I like JRPGs but feel the genre has gone downhill. I had the idea of writing something spoofing and deconstructing certain stock shonen characters(for instance showing what would really happen if an idiot hero charged into battle against a much stronger foe)... who have pretty much gone out of vogue in the west anyway.

I have an urge to say something relevant but I don't really know what. All my ideas appear as rpgs, only I find rpg maker a pain to use