Discussion You Know You're a Fan Fiction Writer When...

(This also happens to me on a daily basis )

 

*waves goodbye to colors* YKYAFFWW the due date for a challenge fic whooshed past, but you're embroiled in research to complete the thing; you just may find the research more satisfying than the completed fic ...

 

... you bask in the relaxing feeling of finally writing the last missing scene in the WIP you've been messing with off-and-on for several years. No more placeholders, no more <insert XYZ scene here> tags... there's finally a fully written story, start to finish. (And my longest one to date.)

 

...you write a lullaby in Mando'a.

 

You're not really sure if you want to end a story you're working on or .....just start a new story and continue where the last one ended or maybe actually...

 

You have an idea for a chapter, look through a nearly 20 year old kids' book to see if it fits, see that it doesn't, and STILL decides to run with the original idea with a few changes.

 

...when you suddenly have to look up the history of television, the VFW, how Social Services works in Texas, and which rifle the Marine infantry would have used during the Second World War. (For the last one: The M1 Garand.)

 

...when you follow each new SW content release to instantly determine how to fit that into your personal "verse".

 

You take vacation time specifically to write for the 2023 Fanfic Summer Olympics

 

Back in 1997, I decided that Alderaan had a language that was used mostly for ceremonial or decorative things. Kind of like GFFA Latin. I used it on a piece of jewelry for an Alderaanian Jedi. 26 years later, I wrote large sections of the coronation of Queen Leia in Taiald and made it a rule that the court members don’t speak basic from midnight until the moment after she’s crowned. I have linguistic nuance and a couple of dialects. Also, don’t get me started on the religion I invented because of a throwaway line in the ESB novelization about Leia saying prayers that she often used on Alderaan when Luke and Han are stranded outside the base on Hoth.

This is what happens when a language nerd is obsessed with one planet for two decades. Meanwhile, my published books have…one scene with a Spanish hymn and several passages in Hebrew for a Jewish character during Shabbat.

 

... when you do some research to describe a swamp, and you start reading about wetlands and find out that swamps, bogs and marshes are entirely different things, and by Sunday lunchtime you've become an expert on the draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes and the Sudd of South Sudan. #help

 

I spent several hours researching mountain formation and types of erosion so I could write a chapter in which Princess Leia hallucinates climbing a mountain. Oh! And then I used that knowledge to talk about the Grand Canyon a month later.

 

...when you know 500 is not an insurmountable request, but it looks like a climb up Mount Everest with no provisions.

 

You have six pages of backstory for a character who never appears in the story. (I decided to not include the grisly details on second thought.)

 

...when you go 70k into backstory and haven't yet given up the idea of minor character showing up at dorm room door to knock someone over head with common sense. (This actually happened in draft form in two different varieties and was spurred by the Titan AE soundtrack. Tomorrow's an illusion, yesterday's the dream, folks, and it's not quite paradise...)

 

Titan AE soundtrack FTW.

As for the thread, um... ...when you're coming up with one-off OC names, and you inadvertently create the same name for different characters at different points of the story but you don't even realize it right away.

 

I’ve been writing a collab universe of Transformers fanfic since 2009. It’s an established joke that we drop in guys named Glenn once in a while. Two of them are canon minor characters.

You write a story that’s 365,000 words long, then decide it’s needing some more scenes when you start to repost it.

 

... when you're planning your entries for the Fanfic Olympics, and you realise that there's a prequel to those entries that you haven't written yet (even though it's been living rent-free in your head for the better part of a decade) and you start wondering if you should write it first because the Olympics stories would spoil it, or if you should focus on the Olympics because you already bit off more than you can chew, and you spend several hours contemplating this dilemma instead of writing anything at all.

 

SAME! The struggle is real.

 

It is! And I mean, I don't want to sound cocky here, but writing in general hasn't been an issue for me lately. The words are mostly coming (although Wookiee myths and legends aren't in my wheelhouse, but OK, I got this). But my regular, run-of-the-mill fare? There are so many loose ends I want to tie up, and alternative options I want to explore, before I move on to something else – and I do very, very badly, want to move on to something else at long last – yet I keep coming up with reasons to keep writing my run-of-the-mill fare and not move on to something else and 24 hours in a day aren't quite enough and it's just annoying [if there's a face_annoyed emoji please insert here]

 

I’m currently stressed because I want to write a story for normal publication and the deadline is May 30 and I just worked out the plot today and have to write, revise, and polish it while getting ready for the Olympics.

Also, it’s really hard to write British life when you’re not able to use it in a Harry Potter or Doctor Who fanfic. Realism is complicated!

 

To include another dilemma into this mix....

...when you're writing two separate things for the Olympics: one which is a fun exercise in exploring an expanded universe, the other is exploring how to best corrupt a beloved literature with cats but somehow you have more ideas for the latter and you question your state of mind

 

I apparently missed the memo on “we’re all writing cats now.” I keep running across that modification and yet Dantanaskywalker isn’t around to explain it.

 

When upon reading E.K. Johnston's Queen's Peril (spoilers ahoy), you find the bit about the handmaiden gang sneaking out to an actual rock concert by the space!version of My Chemical Romance unbelievable for several reasons, the more minor of which is that you can't imagine rock music on Naboo.

Then you come upon this video:

Now you can.