Category Archives: Post series

My Writing Journey – finale

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Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4:

England’s Parliament building and Big Ben shot from the London Eye, in the rain (Photo: J. Noelle).

I told myself it would be best to take a short break from writing – just until I’d had a chance to settle into my new job and home, and establish myself socially.

That “break” lasted six years.

They say that love is blind.  I’d like to submit my own saying: love can make you stop writing.  Especially when it is unrequited love.  For my time away from writing my novel did indeed involve unrequited love, as well as obsession of an entirely different sort, rivalry, a joking/not joking threat of getting shoved off a boardwalk, and is practically a novel in its own right.

I’m not going to discuss it in any detail, for though it was a significant experience in my life that would go on to shape many things to come and perhaps even still does, it’s not a part of my “story” that I wish to continue living and carrying around with me.

I will concede that it was a time that allowed me to develop other interests, skills, and facets of my personality.  Yet my pursuit of all that stuff (not to mention “the guy”) was no less balanced than when I was deep in the throes of Obsessive Writer’s Disorder – writing nonstop during meals and when I should have been sleeping.

All that’s in the past.

This is the future.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction – finale

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(Continued from Part 1, Part 2 – The Good, Part 3 – The Bad, and Part 4 – The Ugly)

Conclusion

Love it or hate it, fan fiction is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction, pt. 3

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(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 – The Good)

The Bad

We all know that feeling (and, no, the Enterprise smells just fine).

I began this examination of fan fiction in response to two online articles I stumbled across on the subject on the same day: one from Time and the other found here at Flavorwire.com.  I felt inclined to throw in a bit of support for fan fiction given that I started out in my youth as a fanfic writer – something I believe has helped me develop into the writer of original fiction that I am today.

In my first two posts, I reminisced about fun times spent writing in fandoms with friends, and also looked more closely at why writing fanfic can be educational for developing writers, yet why one shouldn’t assume that all fanfic writers are developing writers.

My goal for this series of posts, however, in the same vein as both of the aforementioned online articles, is to be balanced.  So, having already covered the good of fan fiction, we now come to the bad.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction, pt. 2

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(Continued from Part 1)

The Good

I was in grade 11 when I took my first, much-loved, creative writing class.  Except, I don’t actually believe that was my first class.  I think writing fan fiction gave me a far earlier education in writing craft.

I truly do believe this, for writing fanfic offered me ready-made access to what is often the most difficult part of a story to devise from scratch.

Characters.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction

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Introduction – Fanfic and Me

There is a saying I’ve heard, generally among those much more believing in grand Universal plans than me, that if you cross paths with the same stranger three times in a single day than you were meant to meet that person.

I haven’t met any dashing strangers of late.  But one day last week, I did three times come across a topic I don’t generally have much to do with: that of fan fiction (fanfic for short), that is, fan-written stories that star the characters and settings of copyrighted creative works.

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My Writing Journey, pt. 3

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Continued from Part 1 and Part 2:

In late 2004, I had a revelation about the 900-page fantasy novel I’d been working on the past three years – the following two thoughts, in the following order: “I don’t think I achieved good integration of all the characters’ individual plots” and “This novel is getting to be awfully long”.

My first novel was a mess.

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My Writing Journey, pt. 2

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Continued from Part 1:

In early 2002, a professional editor of a fantasy magazine told me my writing was good.  I would have married the guy if I could.

No nuptials were forthcoming.  However with that compliment ringing in my mind, along with the one from my writing teacher back in 1996, plus a growing dissatisfaction with writing short fiction, I felt braced up enough to try my hand at writing a full-length novel.

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My Writing Journey

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Many writers are familiar with the concept of the Hero’s Journey, as elucidated by Joseph Campbell, which forms the backbone and structure of mythic narratives across all cultures, and strongly influences modern storytelling as we know it.

Every writer undertakes his/her own journey as well, beginning as an aspiring writer with an idea and a dream and setting forth in pursuit of becoming a published author.  In this journey the writer him-/herself is the hero, facing all a hero’s necessary obstacles along the way.  In effect, the writer is authoring his/her own life story while simultaneously writing the story of someone else, which is often the writer’s life story yet again, only this time in camouflage.

Author and activist Mary McCarthy wrote that, “We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are all the hero of our own story” (“Characters in Fiction”, Partisan Review, March/April 1961).  This is the story of me and the view from here: my writer’s journey, thus far.

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