Catharsis on the Fly

I have been saying since I started writing fanfic that I want to write original fiction. I used to, before I tried my hand at fanfic after a long spell of writer’s block. As I was writing my first erotic fanfics about Tom Paris and Harry Kim on the good ship Voyager, I was making notes for a novel set in a church and revolving around a solitary religious who comes to live in a parish and inadvertently provokes controversy and conflict. That novel has never gotten written, in ten years, though I’ve written lots of notes for it and a few chunks here and there. But I’ve written over 300 pieces of fanfic since fall 1997.

This afternoon I went looking for the archive of a writer who no longer writes fanfic and discovered that after a long hiatus, she has converted her website to a WordPress blog and is reposting her old stories. Even if she never writes another new fanfic, this is a good thing. It actually made me start to play with the idea of setting up a blog to repost my old fanfic, away from Livejournal. I took down the website I used to have when I thought I was Giving Up Fanfic Forever and going to be publishing my original stuff Any Time Now, but my stories are still available at their respective fandoms’ major archives. My fannish identity–which unfortunately was My Legal Name–has by no means disappeared from the ‘net.

More important than the issue of whether to do as this other writer is doing and start archiving things in one place again, based on WordPress or whatever, is the issue of fanfic vs. original fiction. I keep saying I want to write more original fiction… but I keep not doing it.

You see, one of my guiding principles in life is that if something is difficult, it’s not the right thing to do. I don’t mean that I never do anything that challenges me; if that was what I meant, I’d never get up the steps from the front door to my apartment. (Ow.) What I mean is that anything which is a consistent struggle, which either doesn’t get easier and more habitual no matter how long I do it, or that I keep expressing an intention to do but don’t accomplish, is not the right thing, for me.

For example, there is no AODA group in my area, but there is an ADF group. I said for two or three years, “Oh, I really should go out and visit the ADF grove…. I wasn’t wild about the folks when I met them before, but that was ten years ago… they will have changed, I’ve changed….” I kept saying that, and kept checking the grove website to see when they were celebrating the Neopagan holy days, and knowing just what bus I’d have to take to get out there. I never did it. Never even got close.

Conversely, when I decided I wanted to meet with a Buddhist group, only not the one closest to my home (because of transportation logistics), I simply did a Google search, found a comprehensive list of Maryland groups and their locations and contact persons, and scanned for Tibetan sanghas. I paid a visit to the group that was an easy ride away on the light rail and that was that. An intention was quickly followed by a decision, which was followed by an action that led to other, significant decisions.

I want to write original fiction. Really I do. I say that. And what comes out of my keyboard is fanfic. Fanfic and bloggery, and sometimes, if I try for it, poetry. I am making more use of Livejournal than ever, writing daily posts, putting up links, videos, and pictures of interest, communicating with the world. I might even *feel* like a blogger if it weren’t all on Livejournal, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, the Cinderella of the blogging world. But I like the LJ interface and hate cross-posting. So here I am.