5 Reasons You Should Be Writing Fan Fiction

As I mentioned yesterday in my accountability post, for the next little while I’m setting aside my work-in-progress and picking up my Final Fantasy III/VI novelization fan fiction. Now here’s the thing… There are a lot of writers (and readers) out there who think very poorly of fan fiction. They think its not “real” writing, or they associate it with a bunch of creepy, sweaty fanboys/girls sitting in a dark room, plucking out a wish fulfillment fantasy where a disturbingly perfect character who just so happens to have their exact name gets it on with Buffy or Edward Cullen, or one of the My Little Ponies (*wigged-out-shudder*). And yes, that stuff does exist, and there’s a special place for it far, far away from me, but there is also a lot of good fan fiction out there if you care to look for it, and I personally believe that fan fiction serves several very important purposes in the writing community.

1. It gives you a break and let’s you enjoy writing for a while.
Even those of us who love writing with all out heart and soul want to smash our computer against a wall and/or burn all our notebooks every now and then. Things happen (writer’s block, bad critiques, lost work that wasn’t backed up, etc) that enrage us and make us want to give up on writing forever. That’s where fan fiction can be helpful; it’s easy (because the world is already created for you), it’s fun (because you get to write your favorite characters), and it keeps you moving forward. You might even find, while writing fan fiction, that you come up with a great idea to continue that original fiction you so recently considered tossing off a cliff. Seriously, give it a try…you might find that writing a bit of fan fiction considerably lowers your writing-related stress.

2. It gives you practice and let’s you get the “bad” out.
Yes, I’ll admit it, a lot of the fan fiction out there is beyond awful. But have you ever heard that oft-repeated adage: “Practice makes perfect”? Lame, perhaps, but true. No one ever wrote a masterpiece on their very first try. With the vast, near limitless options to toy with, fan fiction offers you that ability to keep practicing and practicing and practicing, which can only help you become better. Scrawling fan fiction helps you to get down your bad writing, see that it’s bad, and then make it better. Any writing will do this, of course, but fan fiction makes it easier because instead of struggling with your one story over and over again, or constantly wracking your brain to come up with new ideas, you can just jump in someone else’s sandbox and play away.

3. You can just jump in someone else’s sandbox and play away.
Some people say that nothing worth doing is easy. I beg to differ. Yes, effort is a big deal and most things in life are going to be difficult, but sometimes, to keep ourselves from going mad, we have to find the easy out. Fan fiction is that in spades. This is a whole world that has already been created for you, with established characters who have already had tons of work put into them. All you have to do is think of something for them to be doing. That’s it. Play away. Have some fun! Explore! As children this is how we learn and grow, but as adults we forget the importance of real play. Take a page out of the book of babies and toddlers and learn via good old fun and exploration!

4. The community is extremely powerful.
There are lots of websites out there for sharing fan fiction, but the one in particular that I use is FanFiction.net. It’s a great site with a great community, and chances are if you share something there someone is going to find it, read it, and comment on it, and that is pure gold for a writer. We crave feedback, even if its not necessarily good feedback. We want to know, at the very least, that someone is reading. Fan fiction is wonderful for this because of the vast numbers of people who enjoy it. For example, years back I wrote a Harry Potter fan fiction featuring the Marauders. I finished that story years ago, and to this day I get the occasional review landing in my inbox. It might not sound like much, but a single review on a story you wrote ages ago can really mean a lot when you’re currently struggling with your current works. Community is important to keep a writer sane and moving forward, and the fan fiction community is a surprisingly strong one.

5. It keeps you writing.
When you’re a writer (or you aspire to be) actually writing is the most important thing to do. In this brave new world of writing conventions, social media, and author platforms, writers tend to forget that the real deal is putting words to paper. Fan fiction helps with this. Any kind of writing – even the creepy kind I mentioned earlier that I have a restraining order out against – is worth doing if it keeps you putting words to paper. There is no writer without the process of writing, so whatever you can write to keep that process moving forward is a good thing to write.

So now that I’ve thoroughly convinced you, what are you waiting for? Fan fiction could be just the thing you need! I know it’s what I need right now, so I’ll see you all on the other side of a new chapter of Returning Hope.

Author Platforms 101

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

92. Building a platform

For this topic, along with a few other topics I’ve spoken on in the past, I would like to direct you over to Kristen Lamb’s blog. Kristen is the goddess of all things social media and author platform. Anything I know already (which isn’t much), I’ve learned from her. If it weren’t for the good fortune of stumbling across her blog once and deciding to follow it, I wouldn’t know a damn thing about having an author platform. In fact, I’m not sure I would even know what the words “author platform” mean.

Put simply, Writer’s Digest defines an author platform as “your visibility as an author”. It is through this “visibility” that you connect with current and potential readers and (hopefully) sell books. You do so by making yourself available through such things as a professional website, blogs, mailing lists, social media, and any professional connections you have.

Currently my “author platform” is somewhat compact. I have this blog, which is my epicenter, as well as a Twitter account, and accounts at FictionPress.com and Fanfiction.net. I have no connections, to speak of, because I haven’t been in the game very long, and I’m held back by my career in the trades. I don’t currently share my Facebook page with readers because I haven’t yet figured out how to do so without readers being able to see every part of me, so to speak. I want to have some semblance of privacy, after all, some stuff that only family and friends can see.

Someday I hope for my author platform to grow because there is no doubt (now that I know what one is) that it is an important aspect of becoming a successful writer. So for now I keep my eye on Kristen and anyone else who enjoys sharing their knowledge and insights. Thanks all!

Consolidation is Not Just for Financial Debts

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

86. A turning point in your writing career.

Quick, answer me this question first: can you have a turning point in your career if you don’t technically have a career?

Okay, for the purposes of this post we’ll presume that the word “career” refers to time and effort put into something, rather than an actual livelihood. Good? Good.

Now that we have that straightened away, I believe that the most important turning point of my writing career was when I decided to consolidate my Internet presence. If that sounds strange or confusing, let me explain. Prior to starting this blog, my Internet presence was scattered across the web in small, meaningless fragments. I had several failed webcomics, an “art” website that I rarely updated, a Tumblr account that served no purpose than to echo the art site, a handful of different blogs and online journals of which none had any real focus, and one account on pretty much every social media outlet out there. Most of this stuff served as a fun distraction from life for a little while, but in the end they were meaningless wastes of my time that accomplished nothing for me and causes unneeded levels of stress.

When I decided to start this blog I also made another decision: to cut all the other stuff loose. I kept some stuff of course; Facebook and Twitter can be useful, and my Fanfiction.net and FictionPress.com accounts are excellent hosts for stories I want to share for free. All the other stuff, however, I cut away without mercy. I deleted accounts, removed websites, and murdered meaningless wastes of time with a grim smile on my face. I had decided, finally, that I was going to focus my spare time and energy on writing and building a related social media presence. Now I blog, I tweet, I keep an eye on Facebook, and I write. And believe me, it has made all the difference. I’ve been writing on this blog (mostly) consistently for almost a year now, which is a longer stretch of consecutive time than I’ve ever stuck with one project before. In addition to that, since I made the decision to put my focus on writing I’ve written more than ever before. I’ve finished one manuscript and am getting ever closer to finishing another. I don’t think I would be exaggeration if I said that I’ve written more in the past years than in the total ten years previous. It really was an excellent decision that has seriously affected my writing “career” for the better, and I just hope I am able to keep it up for as long as it takes to turn that “career” into a career.

Cry of the Wolf

I got an email yesterday. Not an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, I know. But the content of that email was part of a series of emails I’ve been getting for several years now. This particular one stated that a user of FanFiction.net had added my story, “Cry of the Wolf” to their favorite list.

“Cry of the Wolf” is a Harry Potter fan fiction I wrote and published to FanFiction.net back in July of 2004. I rewrote and republished it on a newer FanFiction.net account in 2008. Over the course of the past 8 years and those two accounts this story has received a total of 286 reviews, 279 favorites, and 82 follows. Every few months, without fail, I’ll get a notification email to let me know that someone has stumbled across the story and either reviewed it, made it a favorite, or followed it in hopes of more chapters be added in the future (although the story is unofficially finished). This never ceases to amaze me because it was just something I threw together back when I first discovered fan fiction and decided to try my hand at it.

Since the string of notifications never seems to end, obviously there must be something to this story, so I thought I’d share the link here to the revised version. Please note that this story contains spoilers if you somehow have yet to read the Harry Potter series, and it is also a Remus/Sirius slash fiction (boy love) if you’d rather stay away from that kind of thing.

But if you’re interested, here you go:

Cry of the Wolf – Version 2

Enjoy!

All work and no play…something something.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that you have to be willing to put in hard work and dedication if you want to accomplish something. I’m not the most hard-working or dedicated person in the world (ha!), but a few months ago I made a promise to myself that I was going to finish that damn zombie story if it killed me, and low and behold, I did it! With that same level of hard work and dedication I hope to, soon enough, edit the hell out of that story and get it published. Diligence!

But there’s one other thing I know for sure, and it’s this: sometimes you have to goof off too. Remember that thing about all work and no play? We all know how that turned out in The Shining, don’t we?

We all have to let loose every now and then, whether it be partying with friends, taking a trip, splurging on a treat for yourself, or whatever strikes your fancy. For me, I want to continue working on my zombie novel, but I also feel that I need (and deserve) to goof off a bit. That’s why I’m taking a couple of weeks to play around with my Final Fantasy fanfic. If there’s one thing that feels like goofing around to a writer, it’s writing your own version of a world that already exists.

Once I catch up to the point I left it off at (there were a few editing issues in the first couple of chapters), I’ll start posting it to FanFiction.net again and link it here. But for now, a question: what do you do to ‘goof off’ when you need a break from ‘hard work and dedication’?