I’ve been telling stories all of my life. To myself, in my head. To my baby sister when she was little. Bedtime stories to a college roommate that had trouble getting to sleep at night. Bedtime stories to the kiddos I work with now.
I’ve also been writing all my life. For classes in high school and college. In journals. Poems. Short stories. Here's a funny story about my first college English class. Huge class at a huge school. My first writing assignment was to write a epilogue for Glass Menagerie in the style of the narrator of a novel we had just read, Brave New World maybe, or Left Hand of Darkness. The night before class, I had a dream that I got an A and the professor read some of it in class. I told myself it was stupid when I woke up. This wasn’t high school, where my writing got some attention from teachers. This was college! This was serious stuff!
I got an A and the professor read some of my paper aloud in class. My one brush with psychic powers, and it was for that.
Despite having compliments on my writing throughout my life, I never sat down to write a novel. The thought was overwhelming to me. Around when I hit 40, I decided to bite the bullet and try. Wrote a few chapters, and then realized it was complete crap. I needed to learn how to write, for free, and in the time I had that wasn’t already used up by work and home. A friend turned me on to fanfic, and I read and read and read. And then I wrote. A novel length fic. With a wonderful beta reader who knew her stuff and helped me for free. In that first fic, the writing wasn’t bad. On one website, it had almost 15k readers. But after two more novel length fics, and a herd of short fics, the writing was better. I worked with around 5 talented beta readers in all, and each taught me things I needed to know. My fics won several awards, which pleased me, though I didn’t go posting banners all over creation. I have nothing against doing that, it just wasn’t my style.
I was ready to start my first novel. Then I had life issues and stopped writing almost altogether for two years. Then I sat down and wrote my first original novel in two months. I’m working on my second now, which is going slower but just as enjoyable.
I’ve seen some fanfic haters in my life, but it was an awesome place for me to get started. From the beginning, I had a plan. To learn to write, and then move on to something of my own. Do I still have things to learn? Sure. But I am a much better writer because of fanfic.
Wow. I got rambly again. didn't I?