Of Writing Rants and Fan Fiction

"Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish." - John Jakes


This weekend, between proposal writing and room cleaning, I managed to collect up my journals that I brought with me to college and read what I had written. It's interesting, reading the excerpts that I had managed to eke out before I had gotten sick of the plot and stopped, moving on and starting a new story entirely.


My biggest problem with writing is my own inner critic, that little voice inside my head telling me that what I've written is absolutely ridiculous and that no one would ever read it. It's crazy, and I know it. It's like having a fear and knowing it's irrational but being unable to stop being afraid of that irrational thing. 


Don't get me wrong - I love writing. My problem is writing anything longer than a few thousand words that I'm willing to let others read, and, of those stories, none are original works.


Yes, I write fan fiction. Or, more specifically, I did write fan fiction, until I tried to write my own original fiction. Which, unfortunately, is not as easy as I thought it would be. With fan fiction, you have already developed characters, settings, and basic plot themes. And, unless you're planning on writing outrageously AU (alternate universe) fiction, you don't really have to worry about changing any of those. You already know the characters and their personalities - how they act, how they speak. And although you are writing your own story with those characters, it's not the same scope as writing with your own, creating an entire world from scratch.


I've tried, trust me. I've won National Novel Writing Months for three years, and although I've managed to write over 150,000 words of original fiction, I've yet to write anything from that that is at all readable. And I know that's not the point of NaNoWriMo - the whole concept is writing quantity instead of quality. But, after a while, it gets old. Writing these stories that, by the end of November, I can't stand in the slightest. What's most disappointing about the entire thing is that I want people to read what I write. I want my parents to know that this whole writing thing, I can really do it. I want them to read what I write and I want them to be proud of me. And I know that's not the best reason to write, and it's not the only reason. But it gets to you, after a while. 


I realize that I may be overdramatizing the whole situation, and it's mainly because I am very frustrated with my inability to even write a single sentence without crossing it out. I get too concerned with what other people will think (and what my inner critic is saying) to even write out an entire paragraph.


This crippling inability to write hasn't been present forever - it started around my last year of high school, probably around February or March. I haven't the slightest idea why this happened, but I know that I'm really, really annoyed by it.  I have, recently, been thinking about diving back into writing fan fiction, if only because I have some ideas for places that I'd really like the Doctor, Amy, and Rory to travel to. 


And then I get embarrassed. Because I feel that if I write the fan fiction, no one I know (IRL) would want to bother with reading it, and while it's not my primary motivation for writing, it certainly plays a factor in the whole process. I want to show people what I can do, that all this "novel-writing" business isn't just me with an really, really unattainable dream. 


Writing this blog has helped, however. Maybe it's the process of thinking (out loud? in a way) that has helped. This isn't the most cohesive post, and I certainly apologize. Perhaps I will come back next week with some new (fan?) fiction to share. Maybe my muse and I will reconcile and have a most harmonious reunion.


Until next Monday, best wishes!


Taylor


P.S.


Okay, mainly to boost my own self-esteem (because, frankly after writing this post, I got a little doom-and-gloom) I thought I'd include the singular piece of writing that I liked from my NaNo novel in 2009.

God was crying. That's what my mom used to say, when it was raining. God was crying because bad people were doing bad things, and he couldn't bear to see His children doing those atrocious acts. I used to ask her why He didn't intervene, and she would reply that sometimes, God wasn't able to rectify all of the atrocities that man had created for himself. The Almighty, as powerful as he was, didn't have the capacity to fix everything. I used to nod my head in compliance and watch the rain fall, wondering what sort of horrible things God was witnessing.

I knew now, what He saw. He saw the pain of a mother losing her only child. He saw the horror of a man killed while walking down the street, simply because of his sexual orientation. He saw children starving in the streets, His children. And yet He did nothing. I could understand not rectifying a few troubles of the world, but not all of them. I could barely fathom the idea that He would allow such behavior from His creations. The Almighty Creator couldn't fix everything, I remember my mom telling me.

But I wish - and used to pray, before I realised that He wasn't going to answer - that He could fix what had happened in the world during the past year and a half.