Where’s Your Proving Ground by Shan Jeniah Burton

When I announced my goals for this round, I titled it “Proving Ground”, because Round Two always means high-intensity for me. It’s the end of our winter hibernation. The kids and I tend to move from more introspective occupations to more active, extroverted ones.

 

April also kicks off my annual season of creative intensity:

 

• I write a novel for CampNaNoWriMo.
• I blog alphabetically during the Blogging From A-Z April Challenge.
• This year, I’m also serving as a minion there, in addition to my ROW80 sponsor duties.
• I write a Story A Day.
• I’ll plot another novel in my Kifo Island Chronicles.
• I’ll draft that for JuNoWriMo.
• I’ll plot yet another for July’s CampNaNo.

Like I said, it’s the Season of Creation, and it tests and stretches me.

With all that happening, why would I decide to take on something big? Something that’s been lurking there in the dark shadowy places of my mind for decades? Something that feels like taking a flying leap off the crumbling edge of an infinite abyss?

 

Sometimes we need that proving ground – to learn what we’re made of, where our limitations are, and what we can accomplish. There are times when tiptoeing into growth and change isn’t as effective as flinging ourselves over that edge, spreading our feather and wax wings and hoping like Hades the brightness doesn’t bring on a deadly plunge back to terra firma.

 

This round is my time. I’ve discovered my personal proving ground.

I’ve been writing fan fiction since I was 13 and fellow ROWer (and friend since we were 4) Eden Mabee dragged me kicking and screaming into my first love affair with a Vulcan. We wrote as a way to liven up some of the creativity-sapping numbness of public high school, passing several notebooks full of mostly spectacularly bad stories back and forth, mucking up one another’s storylines, evolving as writers. We were passionate about what we created.

We cut our writing teeth on those stories, which expanded to include other fandomsand aspects of our own lives. During those years, we also created original characters and story worlds that are the origins of what we both write today. Neither of us would be as strong without those early collaborative efforts, and the things we learned in the course of them.

 

How does that relate to my proving ground?

Through April, I’m expanding each of my Boldly Go Star Trek: Enterprise A-Z stories, and sharing them publicly at fanfiction.net. While I’ve been sharing myEnterprise stories on my own blog since 2014, there’s a certain security in that. Folks who come to read there generally know me from somewhere, and there’s lots of other material there, as well. That means that the fan fiction wasn’t the first or only way someone was likely to encounter my writing. I wouldn’t be judged, as a writer or a person, solely on that.

 

Why is that such a Big Deal?

For decades, I was ashamed of my passion for this type of writing. My parents considered all writing something of a pipe dream – I was a teen in the 1980’s, and self-publishing and Kindle were words with very different connotations back then. Star Trek was, in their opinion, a “stupid show” and I was “wasting my time” being interested in it at all. That I was also more inclined to write those stories than to apply myself to tedious, unimaginative homework assignments made it something to be reviled, a piece of foolishness that just showed that I was unrealistic, lazy, and other things – not a one of them positive.

 

I carried those parental messages in my head and my heart well into adulthood. I wrote in spiral bound notebooks, and, when I finished one, I dutifully shelved it, or stuck it in a cabinet. I might show them to Eden, and sometimes read saucier bits to my Accomplice. But I didn’t share them beyond that; they weren’t “serious” writing, and I never intended to make any money from them. I wrote them because I couldn’t not write them.

 

The problem with hiding away our passions, or treating them as though we should feel shame for daring to indulge them, is that this attitude can also suffuse the rest of life. Denying or labeling them “not good enough” to be out in the light condemns something of our selves to the shadowy places, too. We’re passionate about certain things because it’s part of our nature, an intrinsic part of who we are.

 

When we deny passionate parts of ourselves, we lose something – not just in those denied passions, but in everything we write.

So, this month, I’m taking lots of deep breaths and flinging myself out over the edge. I’m sharing these stories, and I plan to keep on doing it. I’m offering them up in a place where they can stand in the light, then lift swiftly or leisurely from the ledge, to soar and dance and laugh and sob and be free, right there for all comers to see them, read them, and know a bit of my passion, and my self.

It’s my proving ground. I won’t earn a penny doing it, but there are things to be gained that money can’t buy. Self-expression. Honesty. Wholeness. Acceptance of myself as I am.

 

You can find the stories, if you’re interested, at my fanfiction.net page.

Is there a proving ground in your life? Something you’ve denied or tucked away in secret shame? Can you think of a way to challenge yourself to stretch and grow this year? Will you fling yourself over the edge with me?

~*~

Shan Jeniah Burton