So, I write. Can’t help it, it just happens. Most of what I write is nonfiction, but every once in a while I get bitten by a bug and have to write a story down. This may happen a couple of times with a brief idea while watching a show I like. Or I may get bitten by an alternate way things could have gone, something that might have happened had the show writers not been constrained by their formula, by the hour-a-week, by the network rules.
When I write fan fiction, there is less “making up a story” and more “grabbing the tail of the muse” as she storms into my life and then hanging on for dear life for the ride. If we’re lucky, the story gets finished. If we’re not, it doesn’t. I usually have a policy of not sharing with other than beta readers until it’s done.
I do write smutty fan fiction on occasion. It’s a hobby, why shouldn’t I have fun with it? I rarely write slash, not because I have a problem with it, but because that’s not usually the direction the muse goes for me. Usually.
One major exception was the long Dr. Who fanfic I wrote back in 2010. I did not start watching the show until that year, then watched everything from 2005 onward, through the last of David Tennant’s reign. Then I watched it again. And had the same thought as RTD would express… “They did that wrong. She never would have stayed.” And like many, many fans, was bit hard by the muse.
260,000 words later, I published Symbolon to the Teaspoon archive. It is not my only long fanfic, but it’s probably my favorite. I write the stories I want to read, and going back and rereading this this year, I think I hit the mark with this one. But… the muse was strange. And the Doctor and his companions are forces of nature. And from the first, writing it was living it, I was as surprised as anyone by what came next most of the time. I knew I would end up rewriting The End of Time. And that I would have to deal with the aftermath of Torchwood’s Children of Earth (because this is, in many ways, the mother of all fixit fanfics, and I couldn’t leave Jack so broken…) I had no freakin’ clue about the secondary pairings when I started, and was surprised as anyone by the blue box in the middle. I did know roughly what would happen at the end. but the ride was intense.
Someone left a review saying that they kept coming back to read this one, despite being squicked by the slash that happens along the way. What can I say? It’s not usually my style, but it’s what happened.
I am waiting for the muse to rush me again for my original fic I’ve been working on for a couple years now. It’s hard though, because when she rushes she usually rushes about major arcs of history. And it’s awesome that 5000 years of future history keep dropping into my head, but I really wish some character development would come with it, you know? There’s this huge universe for me to play with, mostly waiting for me to have the headspace to work on it.
If you’re curious about other things I’ve written, you can check out my fanfic master list on Dreamwidth. It does not include my long, WIP Castle fanfic. That’s on fanfiction.net, with the smutty bits scattered through my journals. Therapy left off on at a decent stopping point, but isn’t finished. At some point I’ll rewatch seasons 1-3 and get bit by the bug again and finish it… I did after all finish Facing Janus after it sat for TEN YEARS. That’s another long one. Therapy was an exception to my “Don’t publish until it’s done” because I was basically just writing to get myself through the summer post-cliffhanger, and thought others might want to come along for the ride.
I have a couple of WIPs sitting on my hard drives. Making Fate is a post-series JAG fanfic that stalled out when I got bitten by another bug. I also have a post-Moebius fanfic for Stargate SG-1, temporarily called “Klein”, but it also stalled out when I decided it wasn’t quite the story I wanted to read. Klein is still waiting on a rewatch, it may take a rewatch of JAG to really get into Making Fate again. And I would rather work on the original stuff first. If someone really wants to read the WIPs knowing they’re not going to be picked up any time soon, just ask.
