My Personal Rules for Writing Fanfic

1. Follow the story wherever it goes.

2. All pop culture characters know each other; they just don't always know that they know each other.

3. When in doubt, set your story in an alternative universe.

4. If a solution seems way too easy, it obviously isn't.

5. When writing the actual story, it's always better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Thoughts About Writing I

Scribo ergo sum. (I write; therefore, I am.)

My late father used to talk about how we all write our own stories. Some of us choose happy endings and some of us choose sad endings. And some of us are at the mercy of an unsympathetic editor who continually rewrites our material.

All great writers have a bit of OCD in their makeup. And, I suspect, a bit of MPD as well.

Is it worse to be a supporting character in someone else's story and wind up with a happy ending or to play the lead in one's own story and wind up with a tragic ending? And what about those poor souls who don't get a choice?

Which is greater: the writer who uses a vocabulary that can be only understood by a thousand people or the writer who uses a vocabulary that can be understood by a million people?

Few writers experience as much danger or hardship on the job as the average factory worker. But one would never know that from the way many writers talk.

When you grow up among people who have worked in steel mills and automobile factories, it seems a bit obscene to go on and on about how "hard" it is to be a writer. Especially when the hardest part about being a writer is rarely the actual writing. It is finding something to write about that people are actually willing to pay you to write about.

Should I find it ironic that the most honest stuff I write is usually written under a pen name?

How come you hear so much about people writing short stories but never about anyone writing a long story?

Writing Fanfic

For some odd reason, I have been writing a lot of fanfic lately and not the reality kind either. Though it may be argued that fanfic is not a recent thing for me -- after all, this story certainly qualifies as fanfic and so does this one -- I do seem to be writing more fanfic nowadays than I ever imagined I would be. In fact, I've written so much fanfic that it seems harder and harder for me to make it through the day without writing at least one chapter of a fanfic story.

If nothing else, such experiences have made me understand why so many people find writing fanfic to be so addictive. Granted, I can readily understand why most people don't consider it all that respectable to "create" new stories using another person's characters. And my main intention in writing these stories is not to rob another writer of his or her just desserts. And yet writing such stories have taught me more about the craft of storytelling than I ever learned from more respectable sources.

Besides, I do not intend to keep writing fanfic all my life. But as long as I receive "likes" on the site where I post my stories, I'm not likely to stop any time soon.

The Eternal Paradox

If I sit around and try to write a respectable piece of literature, the words just won't come.

But if I treat it as a hobby and write something merely for the fun of it, then the words flow like water in summertime.