Fanfiction: My Writing Experience

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From an early age

When I was about eight years old, I wrote poetry whenever I felt sad, afraid, or unloved, which was most of the time. I still have those poems saved in a scrapbook. However, the first real short stories (which evolved into novella and novel lengths quickly) that I wrote were fanfiction. That’s how I cut my teeth in writing, and I wrote almost exclusively fanfiction from the time I was twelve or fourteen years old until I was about forty-one years old. The subject matter flipped from science fiction to modern medical drama, but my obsession for writing it remained as intense. After 2012, certain not-so-great events in my life led me to stop writing almost entirely for about three years, after which I determined to write my first original work, novel length, which I wanted to make public and publish. From 2015 to 2022, I worked feverishly on my first novel of the Ashes trilogy, Ashes of Injustice, until it was ready for submission to literary agents. I completed at least the first drafts of the following two books in the series.

From outer space to inner space

I was twelve when I received my first Star Trek novel book set for Christmas. The first of those books that I read was The Entropy Effect by Vonda M. McIntyre (Pocket Books, New York, 1981), followed immediately (as in the next day) by The Covenant of the Crown by Howard Weinstein (Pocket Books, New York, 1981). I was hooked. I’d been a Star Trek: The Original Series fan for a couple of years and gobbled up the books, determined that I would write my own Star Trek story for others to read just like these.

I took out my package of looseleaf and a pencil and began to feverishly write my own adventure involving Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy on the fly. I spent weeks scribbling out the story without any research, prewriting, or plotting involved—pure unadulterated ‘pantser’ at work. It took me three months to finish what I loosely call a first draft—about three hundred handwritten looseleaf pages long. Not bad for a young teenager with no formal writing training beyond what I’d learned in Language Arts class at school. I even rewrote the first draft in what I affectionately call the ‘final draft,’ which I then placed in a binder and hid away on a shelf for the rest of my life because, despite my original aspirations, I was too afraid to let anyone read what I’d written. I still have that binder with that novel. It’s my private treasure and will probably only be read by one of my children following my death as they clean out my hoard. It’s my precious, my first, and… awful.

I didn’t stop there, however. I continued to write Star Trek fiction into adulthood, branching from Star Trek: The Original Series to Star Trek: The Next Generation when it first appeared on television screens in the late 1980s. However, I’ve always lacked self-esteem or confidence, so those works were also hidden away in binders and notebooks in boxes in my basement, never to be seen again. I lost many of those works in two basement sewer backups. I wasn’t overly heartbroken since I never dreamed I’d allow anyone else to read anything I’d written for fear of ridicule and rejection. My dream always had been to publish a novel, but I didn’t possess enough belief in myself and my writing at that point to do anything about it. It would take another decade or more before I allowed others to view my writing.

Thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, I began writing fanfiction based on the television series House M.D., created by David Shore for Fox Television and starring Hugh Laurie as the famous anti-hero infectious diseases specialist Dr. Gregory House, and for the first time, allowed others to read my work.

House M.D. helped me through a very dark handful of years:

I won’t go into detail here about why I was in a very dark period during my House M.D. fanfiction years; that’s too private. Still, it was through writing my own short stories (and a couple of novels) on internet sites like Fanfiction.net and Livejournal.com that I could survive deep depression and emotional distress. I finally found a way to make my writing public anonymously, have people read and enjoy my work, and receive feedback. I joined a community where I felt I belonged for the first time. Sadly, I had never felt as accepted by a group of peers in any church I had ever attended (or have attended since) as I did in that community of House M.D. fanfiction writers. Sure, I had the odd detractor, but most accepted me as an equal and enjoyed my stories. I received excellent feedback that helped me become a more confident writer.

Unfortunately, I didn’t receive the same encouragement and support from family, which might have propelled me to write original fiction for a public audience sooner had it existed. Painful and disappointing events occurred in my life following the ending of the House M.D. television series, and I stopped writing almost entirely. I was in a deep black hole, and moving to the United Arab Emirates away from my daughters for my husband’s job didn’t help.

Courage—thanks to fanfiction:

I found myself isolated in the UAE, with only my busy husband, who had little time for me; I fell into a more profound depression and needed to find a way out. In the past, I’d always found writing helped ease my sadness and anxiety, so I decided I needed to get back into the swing of it. Still, I no longer had a television program to base my writing on (we had minimal English-language television options in the UAE and watched almost nothing at all). I discovered I had to create something original—original characters, setting, plot, and backstories—and it was daunting. It took weeks to brainstorm an idea for a story and then nearly a year longer to develop characters and basic story synopsis. From there, I had to teach myself how to develop my characters and plot out a novel properly using the internet as a source of learning material. It took me five years to complete Ashes of Injustice to the point where I was willing to allow alpha and beta readers to read it, knowing who had written it—anonymity no longer! If I hadn’t already had the experience of allowing total strangers to read my fanfiction stories online, I would never have found the courage to let people offline to read my original work. I want to say it was a fresh in-filling of the Holy Spirit that gave me the courage, but in truth, it was thanks to fanfiction. Did God bring fanfiction into my life to give me the experience and courage I needed to reach this point? It’s entirely possible. I don’t know. But I can’t express enough how much writing fanfiction developed and prepared me as a writer to now be attempting to get Ashes of Injustice into the hands of a literary agent and, hopefully, from there, to a publisher.

“And miles to go before I sleep.”

In his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost couldn’t have more accurately described my current situation. I still have a long way to go to see my dream of being a published author. I’m still querying agents, hoping one will pick me up. It’s highly probable that with my first manuscript, it won’t happen. In that case, I’ll have to make some hard decisions—revise and try again with an improved manuscript of Ashes of Injustice or forsake traditional publishing and go the route of self-publishing hardcopies or Kindle Direct Publishing? Or move on to an entirely different novel I’ve written and begin the querying process over again with it? I’m not sure yet what my next steps will be, but I know that I’m not going to give up (though I often feel like doing so) until I have my book with my name on it published somehow and in the hands of readers where it belongs.

While I wait…

In the meantime, I’ve written a novel that I am publishing on my blog in weekly installments, and I invite you to read and enjoy it while I wait on the traditional publishing process. It is an entirely original, previously unpublished story titled Filling the Cracks. Filing The Cracks will be posted weekly on Wednesdays, one chapter at a time, right here on my blog at paulinejgrabia.com, beginning August 2, 2023, for twenty-five weeks. As of writing this post, the first chapter is already up at www.paulinejgrabia.com/my-blog/filling-the-cracks-chapter-one. Be sure to go there next and read the first chapter and return each week to find out how the story progresses. It is available for free to anyone who wants to read it. I hope you’ll enjoy it and offer me constructive comments and criticism in the comment section below each post.

Thank you again for joining me here and reading until the end! I hope you’ve found this entertaining, encouraging, and informative. Are you an aspiring writer looking for a boost of courage to get you rolling in your career? Have you written fanfiction before? I’d love to hear from you, so please comment in the section below this post. Also, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to my newsletter so you can remain updated on what is coming in my blog in the coming weeks and months. Please share this blog with your family and friends and return next Sunday for another of my posts and a new chapter of Filling the Cracks every Wednesday.  May God bless you richly this week to come and always!

Pauline

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