I came here to write a post about Christmas and found this post that I never published. Better late than never?
December 1st 2010. National Novel Writing Month is over. My "novel" is a few hundred words shy of 9000, and a few thousand words shy of the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo goal. So what do I have to show for the hours I spent attached at the fingertips to my laptop?
It's called Fan-Fic. For those of you who've never experienced the insanity that is Fan Fiction, let me explain. There's a website. FanFiction.net. It's dedicated to stories that people make up based on other stories, movies, tv-shows, and any sort of work of fiction you can imagine.
For the record, I've been immersed in fan fiction for many years now, I just never wrote it. I always liked to make up my own stories based on other stories, imagine alternate endings, or different scenarios. All these years, I thought I was just weird.
I admit, I am weird, but as I've discovered, I'm sure not alone, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of stories on FanFiction.net, which led me to realize that compared to some, I'm relatively sane. What a relief.
This past summer, I read the Harry Potter series for the first time and promptly embarked on a story of my own. I decided to give a shot at writing it up as a fan-fic, just to get it out of my head and to practice my writing skills before November.
I got hooked. NaNoWriMo went on the back burner. From a writing standpoint, I'm actually pleased. Unlike NaNoWriMo, where I was obsessed with producing sufficient word count, with fan-fic I have been focused on perfecting my chapters so I can post them on line, for actual readers. I've taken 7000 words that comprised the beginning and ending of my story, and have fleshed them out to over 30,000 words. I have, for the most part, accurately translated the product of my crazy mind into a written document.
My last chapter had over 100 readers within 48 hours of posting. I have no idea how that statistic stacks up in the world of FanFic, but I'm pleased with it. Readers. What more can a writer want?