My last post here was on the first day of the year, and it may seem like I haven’t been writing much. But the truth is exactly the opposite — I have been writing so many words over the past month that it must have been my second-most productive month ever in terms of writing (the most productive month, of course, goes to July 2014, when I won the Camp Nanowrimo challenge that requires a 50,000 word output in a month). Over one particularly satisfying weekend, I hammered out over 10,000 words, only realising that I had crossed the milestone when I started rereading what I had written.
I wish I can say that I made huge progress in the novel I am planning, but the truth is all those words were for fan fiction.
I was inspired by rereading some of my old favourites over the Christmas break. Rereading old favourites always bring new discoveries, and one of the things I noticed was that almost all of my favourite fanfics were written by writers in their late teens. In the author’s notes section, there were familiar grumblings about assignments or thesis (and when I looked at my own fanfics from way back, the notes section were filled with similar rants).
One particularly epic fanfic that basically recreated the whole storyline for the main character was written over seven years, hitting over 400,000 words by the end of it. The writer talked about her college applications in the first part of the story, and by the final chapters she was talking about finishing her training to be a veterinarian (she got a Masters’ in something else in between).
I was blown away by her dedication. How many hours has she devoted to the fanfic?
It was amazing because it was a rarity. Far too many fanfics were abandoned, and I stubbornly reread one that I knew had been abandoned for years. It was a well-written story, and the fanfic was abandoned in the third ‘book’ of the series. When I reached the last chapter, I longed for more follow-ups to a well-developed cast of characters.
(Fanfiction.net — A site where I spent a huge chunk of my time in my teens)
I have abandoned my own share of fanfics, of course. I wonder how many other fanfic writers went through the same journey I did — at some point, I realised that I can never ‘publish’ the fanfics I write, and I want to publish my stories. I want to freely share with people that I wrote those stories and be known for it. Fanfics are time-consuming, and it seemed like time was better invested in ‘original’ stories instead. So I stopped, and for a long time I went without writing anything because I didn’t have ideas for an ‘original’ story.
But in rereading the 400,000-word fanfic and another similarly expansive one written over almost the same number of years, I gained a new appreciation for fanfics. Such fanfics are labours of love, and even if their real names will never be famous and the world won’t recognise those writers on the street, they have legions of readers who invest hours and hours reading them. Readers like me, who learned so much about the language and life and how to be brave and more. Gaining more or less the same things as when reading books, basically.
Except books are often more rigid even if they are good — fanfics can afford to be indulgent, and thus are great guilty pleasures. They can examine a minor character who is interesting; flesh out a character’s past that was only hinted at in the original, satisfying the readers’ craving; indulge in fluffy scenes that the original book/show could not include because of pacing; or even try more unconventional, bolder pairings of characters that simply would not ‘sell’ in a mass market.
One may argue that books have higher standards for craft, but I find that in fanfics one can find rather higher standards of art, and of experimentation (with the caveat that, as with books, there are disproportionately more bad fanfics than good ones. I am talking about the good ones, of course).
I respect the writers who commit to writing good fanfics, and stuck to it until the end. Maybe they grow out of it eventually. But for what it’s worth, they’ve touched many lives in between. Readers like myself benefit so much from them, especially since fanfics are far more accessible than actual books.
Rereading my old favourites made me dust off my old fanfics, and I started writing and rewriting them again. It is true that I want to write my own stories, and hope that one day I will have my work and my name out there. But in the meantime, I no longer think that these fanfics are a waste of time.
Maybe it’s self-indulgent. Maybe it’s good practice. Maybe it’s just fun. But maybe, just maybe, it will help another younger girl out there with no money for books and no access to libraries, and help fire her imagination and inspire her to be braver than she thought she could be.
Between Worlds 