A thing you should know about me: I started out in fan fiction. And when I say I started out there, I mean that right now, that’s what I write. Stories about other people’s characters, stories about real people, or rather about the fictional characters those real people play in the TV show known as celebrity news; stories about the people I’m fannish about, the people who have the power to make me giddy with glee, wracked with nerves or heartbroken. The major difference is – the characters I write about, I didn’t make up in my own head. They already existed somewhere in the world, on TV or in a book or in a band, and they inspire me. They make me want to write.
It’s perfectly possible to have a fulfilling writing career just writing fanfic. It won’t ever make me any money – except in the most unlikely or the most suspect of circumstances – but it is satisfying and as an occupation it often fills me with joy. There’s nothing like writing a story to cater to a specific audience and doing a good job. It doesn’t matter if there are only five of them: it’s wonderful having people who love your work. That small audience of people who love you, the people Havi Brooks would call your Right People, is a priceless thing and I’m immensely grateful to have such people in my life.
So maybe it’s a little ungrateful to be thinking of how I can make money out of my words.
Then again, maybe not.
It’s not just about the money, of course. Part of it’s about wanting to reach a bigger audience with my writing, a larger number of Right People, because maybe there are people outside of fandom who might get something out of my words. Part of it’s about wanting to be able to spend more time doing this satisfying, fulfilling thing, and wanting to have it pay the bills. I don’t have any particular aspirations to being a best-selling novelist, but I’d love to write stories that really speak to those people who are supposed to be reading them, and I’d love for my stories to reach as many of those people as possible.
And not all of those Right People are necessarily in fandom. Not only are they not necessarily in my fandom (God knows, my main fandom is ridiculously small) – they’re not necessarily in a fandom at all. They could be anyone, anywhere, doing anything. It’s going to be interesting trying to reach them. And as yet, I don’t have anything to reach them with.
Let’s have an example here. I wrote a story last year of which I am staggeringly, immensely proud. It’s easily the most personal story I’ve written, and in fact, I think it’s so good that I sort of wish it wasn’t fanfic. It’s called Flaming Ninja Waffles and I literally cannot tell you how much I love this story, because (not to be narcissistic or anything) it’s about me. The characters that I have borrowed from reality are borrowed in name and a few particulars and not much else – in all other ways, those boys are mine. And I would love to write something this powerful and personal that didn’t require prior explanation about why I have taken two pop stars out of their pop star lifestyle and put them in a diner in a small American town instead.
(I don’t have to explain to this story’s Right People, of course, because they already understand. But this is exactly my dilemma – I’m narrowing the field of Right People quite deliberately by writing fanfic instead of original stories. And I think that Flaming Ninja Waffles is exactly the kind of story that, if it were only about original characters instead of fictionalized pop stars, would have the potential of a much wider appeal.)
I don’t want to write Flaming Ninja Waffles again. I don’t want to keep writing the same story over and over. But that was the right voice for me, the right feel for me, and though I’ve written longer stories, and ones that have received more positive comments, that’s the one that it gives me the most joy to re-read. Because it came from my soul (or somewhere like it) and I want to tell more stories that come from that place. (And I’m a little uncomfortable with saying things like “it came from my soul” because, dear God. But those are the words that best convey my meaning.)
I just want to tell those important stories to as big an audience as possible. And that means telling stories about original characters.
When you come from a fanfic background, it can seem a bit intimidating to write something completely original. Fandom is a great safety net, one where there is a wealth of information and shared opinion about the characters you’re telling stories about. And there’s a surprising level of freedom, too. Original work doesn’t have the same safety net. My pool of readers is pretty small; the number of readers who would follow me out of fandom would probably be smaller; the number of readers who would pay money to do so, smaller still. All of this makes me worry about the whole process and whether I’m qualified to do it. Whether I’m capable.
This is completely not the post I intended to write, by the way. I think tomorrow’s post may end up being some version of the post I planned to write today. I hope, anyway!
