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Fanfiction is a wonderful waste of time.
The reasons are different for everybody, that I know. Some do it to explore a universe, one ready-made and yet ripe for coloring outside the lines, while others focus more on the characters to whom they grew attached over a period of time. Still others tie up loose ends, or create entirely new ones. These are all well and good, and more than one applies to me and mine, but that doesn't explain the drive to actually write something so obviously frivolous and indulgent.
If you go by the internet, by actual posted fanworks, I've been doing this for about five years, but in another sense I've been doing this since I could pick up a pen. I guess it's always been there, an innate desire to see a little more, to get in the world and just walk around, get the band back together again and have a grand ol' time. Sometimes it coincides with an idea for an interesting plot, one that happens to fit that particular universe, and sometimes it's just revisiting for the sake of revisiting.
How I got into writing a fan novel - for .Hack, no less, a game which couldn't be more of a naked marketing ploy - still escapes me. The plot to 'Heist' came to me after finishing the first part, lacking any real understanding of the series proper; it was simply a side plot that had little to do with the actual game, save for that it took place there. Maybe it's because the series grew on me, little by little, despite its flaws. Maybe it's because the ideas kept coming, and the more I thought about them the better they sounded, or maybe it's because I wanted to see some real resolution and succumbed to that moment of conceit that hits many (though not all) epic fanfic writers - the thought that I could do a better job wrapping things up.
Maybe I was just really bored. I get that way sometimes.
So, what am I doing here? What can I do with over 400 pages of fanfic, entailing (thus far) almost 18 months of research, writing and revision? What has it brought me? Late nights struggling to finish a chapter, seemingly endless dialogue tweaks, weekly battles with Fanfiction.net-related formatting woes, nervous dancing around the subject when, upon being questioned about my work, I have to admit that I'm writing about a videogame within yet another videogame?
Coping with the reality that all this time and effort might be for nothing, and that a year from now I'll be lucky if two or three people remember who I am, what I did?
Occupational hazards. And yes, that's a fairly liberal application of 'hazard'. 'Annoyance' would be more proper, but I begin to digress.
For me, though, it's not for nothing. The process of critiquing, editing, fine-tuning my fanfics has made me a better writer. Learning to work within the parameters of existing characters, figuring out what they can and can't do, what they will and won't say, has given me a deeper understanding when it comes to creating characters of my own. Writing dialogue, ever my weak spot, has given me a better idea of what will and won't work in a given context. It's not enough, not yet; I've too much room for improvement to say that fanfic writing has made me a novelist, but it is a start nonetheless.
More important that all that, though, is simply that I still find it fun. After all the hard work, all the replaying of scenes to get the exact wording and posturing right, all the sloppy late-night rush jobs to finish chapters I had to force myself to start... after all of it, it's still fun to me. The kind of fun where I can look back on it when I'm done and say "I'm glad I did that." The kind of fun that keeps me awake at night, just thinking of new ways the story could go, new lines of dialogue for new characters. The kind of fun that makes me think, makes me smile, makes me wonder if others are reading this and getting ideas of their own.
Someone a lot smarter than me once said, "The words are mine, but the story is yours."
It's a wonderful waste of time, isn't it?
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