The Story Continues!

Okay, maybe it doesn’t, but below the fold, I shall detail what occurs after the Nightshades in a brief history.

Epilogues Essay 1: Beginning to End

I actually only intended to do three essays, an FAQ based on your questions that you post here, and then I was thinking of doing a musical post that would essentially be the “Soundtrack” of the Epilogues series.  I have chosen to do a fourth essay, which I will actually lead of with, and this essay is essentially why I began, and why I have chosen to stop writing fanfiction.

From beginning to end.

I really don’t know how most people come to fanfiction, but I imagine many of them do so quite by accident, just like me.  We accidental tourists, however, are not the engine that drive fanfiction; as I realized that legions of science fiction and fantasy universe have their own devoted fanfiction followings, I also realized that fanfiction was far bigger than I realized when I first stumbled upon it.

My journey into fanfiction was born from boredom.  My job, being what it is, involves a great deal of free time, and internet access, and so part of my daily routine was fiddling around on the internet and trying to keep my mind occupied for the eight hours I was tied to my office.

At one point I remember being particularly anxious to find out news of the next Harry Potter book.  I was by no means as fanatical as some, but I had unexpectedly fallen in love with the story and wanted to know what happened next.  I was a spoiler junkie trying to find spoilers for the upcoming book, reasoning that everything can be found on the internet if you just looked hard enough.

Back then I didn’t realize how tightly controlled Ms. Rowling kept her work.

So I never found the spoilers I was looking for, but I did find something that seemed tailor-made for my chronic boredom; fanfiction.

This was wonderful!  Not quite as good as the book, but little bite sized dalliances into JKR’s universe that had become my obsession of the moment.  Just my luck, I think that the first one that I read was actually a rather good one.

Like all writing, there is good and there is bad and I wonder how many people stumble onto fanfiction only to have their first experience be bad enough to turn them away from it for good?

In any case, I was lucky enough not to have had an experience like that.  I did have some good experiences, and some that I hate to say were just bad enough to make me cringe.  Slowly, as a few weeks of reading this stuff turned into a couple of months, the same thought came recurring over and over in my head; I can do better.

You see, I’m no stranger to writing. I had learned to read and write at a very young age and had dabbled in story telling my entire life. By the time I came to fanfiction, I may have never actually completed anything beyond a short story or two, but I knew how to write, at least I thought I did.

The idea grew stronger and stronger, until book 6 finally came out and I read it (more accurately, I listened to it, I didn’t get any of the books in print until much later, audio format being my chosen format). I had to admit to being very captivated by the Ginny/Harry romance. In fact, I remembered being upset about the Harry/Cho break up for reasons that I will not go into here.

In any case, at this time a whole bunch of thoughts were swirling in my head, and then I heard this song:

In my minds eye, I imagined this song playing over the big kiss scene at the end of book six. I directed little music videos in my head, the idea had gotten so strong. Meanwhile, that “I can do better” thought was growing stronger and stronger.

You should all be able to guess what comes next.

The idea came like an epiphany, the song was not well suited to the Harry/Ginny romance, but perfect for the Hermione/Ron romance which seemed mired in angst and insecurities. In a flash the scene was concocted, and I had written Right Here in the space of three hours.

I had begun writing fanfiction as a result of a sense of hubris. That would not be how I ended.

**

I learned one thing from Right Here; I loved getting reviews. At the time I was posting on a H/G shipper site, and I think I only got twelve reviews for that story, but that was enough for me to want more, and so I set about writing a second story that was completely and totally intended to garner MORE reviews.

Thus was born One Good Day.

In retrospect, OGD turned out to be my least favorite story of mine as it is composed of four and a half chapters of unadulterated fluff. There’s hardly any conflict, and any substance, though I must admit that it was at least a decent early exercise in characterization. Also, as many of you know, the last half of the last chapter had really set the stage for what would be my magnum opus as far as fanfic writing is concerned; the Epilogues trilogy.

**

I won’t go into much about the Epilogues trilogy here; that I’ll save for the next essay which will cover my influences and inspiration for the stories. Instead, I just wanted to talk about why I am quitting fanfiction, seemingly to the disappointment of quite a few of you.

I began writing fanfiction to prove that I could do better than what I had read. By the time I had finished writing The Nightshades, my motivation had changed. There was indeed a story I wanted to get out and tell, and things I wanted to try, but on perhaps the most significant level, my desire was to learn.

Through fanfiction, I was learning so much about writing that it became necessary that I completed my training, so to speak. This was a matter of finishing what I had started.

And once I finished, I knew I would quit.

You see, I am truly passionate about writing. It is what I do with just about every waking minute of my day. If I’m not writing fiction, as many of you know, I am writing about politics, and while politics is a different kind of writing, I still write from my heart, and I still try to bring that same soul and voice to my political writing that I bring to my fictional writing.

My passion for writing is such that I want to make a living doing it. I want THIS to be my career.

And so the reasons for me deciding to leave fanfiction are mostly selfish.

I do not consider the time I have spent on the stories I have written a waste of time. Indeed, I know for a fact that I am a much better writer because of these stories, and am proud (conditionally) of what I have achieved.

But beyond the end of the Nightshades, I do feel that continuing this endeavor would be a waste of precious time.

Keep in mind that it took me a year and a half to write the Nightshades, and much, much longer to fully conceptualize it. To tell the stories that were to follow could result in seven or eight stories just as long if not longer than the Nightshades, and at that point we are talking about losing over a decade of time.

And believe me, I can’t write politics, fanfiction, and my own work at the same time, I simply don’t have the time. If there were two of me, then maybe, sure, it’d be worth a go, but there’s only one me.

So, something would have to give.

And a lot of it has to do with the fact that fanfiction truly is something of a dead end endeavor. You can’t publish your work. The moment book seven was released, the slightest glimmer of being able to publish the Epilogues had been destroyed, but even if my stories had miraculously managed to remain in canon, I still likely wouldn’t be able to publish any time soon.

And by soon I mean within the next few decades.

I’m not completely up and up on copyright laws, but I do know that in order for you to expound upon a preexisting work, you either need permission from the author, or the work has to be covered under what is called “public domain”.

Typically, a long time has to go by in order for a work to be considered public domain, and I wasn’t exactly hopeful that I would ever get JKR’s permission to continue her story.

Thus, while Epilogues, specifically the Nightshades, gave me many tools to strike out on my own, I have chosen to end my fanfiction writing now because I don’t believe that there are many more tools to be attained from this practice, and there’s no chance for me to use my work in fanfiction to hopefully turn that hobby into a career.

Besides, as neat as I think the stories after the Epilogues might have been, I have continued to have problems fleshing the story out fully, and to this day doubt I could write it without them being too similar to the original Harry Potter novels.

And so that is it. That is why it all comes to an end here. Go out on top, and move on to bigger and better things. Which is exactly where we are going as soon as I complete the rest of my essays.

 

Lindsey

So I’m going to start writing the post Epilogues essays tomorrow night, but in the next fifteen minutes that I have before I have to start getting to work, I just wanted to talk about some other fiction that I really wanted to post here in the future.

CHZO Mythos

You really don’t have any idea what’s in store for you.

Epilogue Update

I did my first read through of the final update to the Nightshades, and I think for the most part it’s pretty good and pretty close to what I want it to be, but at the same time there are some rough spots to it, so I’m going to have to take some time to smooth things out.  I still intend to have it up no later than Friday night, but that is later than I was hoping.

In any case, I realize I’m neglecting this blog lately, but I promise to pick it up some more, get some more games and more reviews.  I just watched Forbidden Kingdom, so I want to find some time to write a solid review for that movie as anyone who is a kung fu movie fan should definitely watch it.

But blogging is something that is a force of habit, and I have yet to make updating here that kind of habit yet.  If these apologies seem kind of repetative, well, think of it this way, it’s me trying to get myself in the habit.

holy crap, I think I’m going to cry a little

It’s done.

Bow Street Runner

This is not one to share with the kiddies.

Alan Probe

You remember “Operation” the board game with the tweezers and the glowing red nose?  Yeah, consider it fossil fodder at this point.

Fiction Friday: Some Goodies Before I Get To Work

It’s Friday, which means that it’s time for me to do some writing, isn’t it?  Well, what’s left to write?  Of course, the epilogue to Epilogues Part III: The Nightshades.  Indeed, it will be the last post I do on MNFF.

Maybe.

Nightshades/Blog Update

Hoo boy, what a week.  This, my friends, is something we’re all going to have to get used to; big days and weeks in politics will result in me being very not here, and this has been an ENORMOUS week in politics.

And still, I have news to report.