So...fanfic

[transposable_element]

 I haven’t been doing this very long.

As far as I can tell from the “created” dates on my documents I started writing fanfic in the spring of 2013, but I don’t remember now exactly what prompted me to start. I had never written fiction of any kind before, except for a few assignments in school more than 30 years ago. Until recently the only other stories I’d made up were the rather formless narratives that I tell to my daughter at bedtime and during long car trips, most of them tales of the adventures of Ruby the Tiger and the Rockhopper Penguins. (They have not yet been to the moon. I am keeping that one in reserve for an emergency.)

I truly have no idea what possessed me to start writing fanfic.

About a year ago I opined on Facebook: “I understand why people write fanfic. I just don’t understand why they show it to anybody.” Yeah. Well, um…I don’t know why anybody else does it, but at a certain point I started feeling quite pleased with some of the things I was writing and began to wonder whether anybody else would like them. I didn't want to show them to anybody who actually knew who I was, so that meant posting online. And then last May a friend told me about AO3, and I thought “well, that doesn’t sound too bad,” and off I went. I got some positive responses, enough to encourage me (now see what you’ve done?), so I started posting more, including a few things that surprised me by coming out more or less on the fly. I have so far posted 32 works (about 150K words) on AO3.

My husband doesn't know I'm doing this. I have only shown him two of the things I’ve written. I think he suspects that I’m hiding something from him. With any luck he’ll assume it’s an affair.

I started out with Narnia but quickly branched out into Swallows and Amazons (originally via a Narnia crossover) and have touched down briefly in a few other fandoms. I seem to be the only person writing anything set in Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s world of Green Sky, which is a real shame. I blame “Frozen 2: A Synoposis” on my daughter. A mature adult can be compelled to listen to “Let it Go” only so many times before something snaps.

If I’m going to keep doing this I've got a lot of work to do on craft—I’m just beginning to realize how much work. Also, I started writing fanfic knowing nothing about the community or conventions or terminology and have been teaching myself as I go along, probably stepping on toes and/or reinventing the wheel. (Beta? What’s a beta? How do you get one? Will you be my beta?) My new favorite expression is “head canon,” because I’ve had head canons for many things all my life and now I know what to call them.

But mostly, I find this puzzling. I’ve been in and around SFF fandom for many years, and I’ve always been the one person in the room who didn’t write fiction and had no ambition to do it. I have no idea what changed.

By the way, I really am looking for a beta reader, preferably one who knows something about the Anglican church. I know I have only a few subscribers, but if you know anybody who might be interested, you might pass this on to them.

Comments

[rthstewart]

I am just LOLing my friend. I'd never heard of fan fic in 1994 when I got online for the first time. I was ehhh... old enough to have driven to Star Wars in 1977. I began writing epic Star Wars after the ultimate hubris, "I can do better than THAT."

I have conservatively written 1.5 million words since then. Yep. And my husband has no clue. Mostly. He's a little more aware now than he used to be but basically, as the saying says on my LJ, I've been hiding fandom in the underwear drawer since 1977. My spawn is more aware than the spousal unit because the spawn understand the Internet.

When I went back to fic -- Narnia -- in 2009, I didn't tell my old fandom friends about the new fandom friends. I had a tag that said, "It's better that they think you are writing Twilight porn than know you are writing Narnia." I made myself an icon: Doctor Prescribes Hormone Replacement Therapy. Read smut.

At this point, I am FAR closer to the age of retirement than the age of legal drinking.

All this to say, you are not alone, welcome from an old crone, and as to why, well, at any age, we need our creative outlets amidst work and car pools, be it dancing, singing, gardening, baking, playing an instrument, knitting, crafting, or writing. For so many, writing is work. for others it is a joy and of particular value is the community that develops around fic, the modern version of chatting over the back fence.

OK, speaking of, I'm off to the daily sports activity car pool.

[transposable_element]

I may be older than you might guess from the hints about my daughter's age: I was 42 when she was born. So although I am not old enough to have driven to see Star Wars in 1977, I am old enough to have seen the original "a boy, a girl, and a universe" trailer. My friends and I knew it would be awful. Then I went to England for the summer and when I came back everybody loved it!

All of which is to say that menopause may very well be the explanation for my sudden transformation.

[TMI gynecological digression deleted.]

My husband knows the internet better than I do, which makes me nervous. That's why I use a super-secret pseudonym that he could probably uncover in five minutes if he tried...

[rthstewart]

Oh yes, many many super secret pseudonyms!!! it's like multiple moniker disorder!! And I so get how you wrote Frozen fic because of your daughter -- that's kinda, sorta how I ended up back in Narnia in 2009. I completely blame it on my spawn.