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I write a novel for CampNaNoWriMo.
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I blog alphabetically during the Blogging From A-Z April Challenge.
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This year, I’m also serving as a minion there, in addition to my ROW80 sponsor duties.
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I write a Story A Day.
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I’ll plot another novel in my Kifo Island Chronicles.
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I’ll draft that for JuNoWriMo.
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I’ll plot yet another for July’s CampNaNo.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for a lovely, inspirational post, a challenge to embrace what I care about most — writing stories. And thank you for linking to two new resources for me . . . A Story A Day (that May Challenge . . . if I write through April’s A to Z Challenge) and your fan stories link. Keep writing, keep following your passions!
No fear, Beth! Writing is and will continue to be happening in my life! I love having spring challenges, because it just seems like the perfect season to stir things up. Honored to be able to offer words and ideas others find inspirational, and to offer links that may fire up your creativity this spring, too.
If you pop by the fan fiction, I hope you enjoy even half as much as I do writing them! =D