A Little Ramble About Writing.

I am really really enjoying this creative writing every day thing that I've been doing for the past week or so. I don't think I've sat down and written so much of a story since... well... Pokemon fanfiction aside.... since high-school.

I've read a couple reviews on Goodreads.com for some really awful books like Marked by P.C. Cast and Halo by Alexandra Adornetto where people have dumped on them because they sound like Twilight fanfiction (having read both, I agree that they do) and then dump on the authors themselves for publishing that crap. Well, I agree that perhaps editors and publishing companies were not in their right minds whenever they bought said manuscripts for the authors, I don't see what is so fearful or pathetic about writing fanfiction...

Fanfiction is writing for the self, I think. More than it satisfies a niche in other people's lives, it satisfies a niche in yours whether you wanted a particular story to flow a different way or you wanted different characters to end up together - fanfiction is self-satisfying. I used to be a self-righteous reader, reviewer, and writer of fanfiction where I fall into traps like "OMGhowcanyouwritesuchanawfulHarryPotterMarySue?!" and "thisdoesn'trelatebacktothestoryatall" and "everyoneissooutofcharacter;howdareyou!" .... but the older I get, I don't know if I've grown up and said "You know, it's only fiction. Everyone's going to write what they wanna write and if it makes them happy, then fine. I don't have to like it." or if my give-a-shit meter is broken.

I am much more harsh with original fiction, of course. But fanfiction, I can overlook all sorts of awfulness.

... now that I am writing my own original creative writing again, I'm not always sure if I want to share it or not. I try not to make anyone Sue-ish, I try not to writing totally out of bounds, I am genuinely trying to write a good story, but I don't aim to profit from it (in the near future?) I am writing strictly for myself and my own satisfaction.

It's kind of nice not having any pressure from anyone to write. When I first REALLY started writing creative fiction, I was doing a piece that based each character from someone I knew in real life, and events in the story were fanciful but somewhat true. When my friends figured it out, everybody got in on the story and the characters and how they should act and I never finished the thing because everything got so convoluted and weird. I couldn't tell what was going on anymore. Nevertheless, I still had a lot of fun writing and rewriting, and I have fond memories of bus rides where we would work out plot points and character dialogue. My greatest regret though was that I never finished it. Now that I have the time, I'm writing it again, but things are going to go my way. I am more than happy to let old friends read it; although they likely won't recognize the characters anymore. As I grew up, they grew up too.

Maybe it's selfish that I'm writing just because I can with no editing or commentary whatsoever, and maybe that doesn't make me much better than my seventh or eighth grade self. Perhaps I will never really grown up out of that fan-character and writing about fan-characters phase...

... no harm in that.