i just spent the last few weeks writing...fan fiction!
yes, i ripped off someone else's characters from a tv show & wrote my own story! & it was so much fun! (actually, i wrote it as a tv script which i've never tried before so it was a great stretching exercise.)
this is a wonderful way to relax & invigorate your writing. since you don't have to worry about creating characters, relationships, histories, basic set-ups, etc., & since you don't have to worry about having it taken seriously since someone else owns the rights, you can just tell that internal, restrictive, critical editor to go take a hike.
that's not to say i didn't work hard on it - i did. but it was more fun to write than my last couple of plays. i took it seriously as story-telling but didn't take it seriously as "art."
i'm posting it on a fan fiction site b/c i'm pretty proud of how it came out & i'm excited to see how other fans of the show respond altho i didn't have this in mind when i started writing it. but even when i began to think about doing this half-way thru, it didn't cramp me up as writing some original stuff does.
so don't take yourself so seriously. take a writing vacation this summer and dabble in a little fan fiction!
I had to consult Wickapedia to find out the definition of fanfiction. It sounds as though it might be a nice diversion, particularly as a writing exercise. Personally, I have too many of my own ideas that I would like to put on paper. I read a wonderful book on Shakespeare, recently, and it stated that it was entirely common for playwrights to steal and plagiarize one another's work. Shakespeare and his contemporaries thought nothing of taking chunks of another person play and inserting it in their own, unchanged. Not so much fanfiction, a fanplagiarism.
I think a more interesting diversion for me would be to write fannyfiction. Oodles of stories about people's bottoms. Small bums, big bums, droopy bums, bums of steel, bums that are fun to caress. It would just be about fannies. It would be like watching a movie where the body from the torso upwards was cut off.
"Her hips moved to the side, her curvaceous bottom following. It was a petulant stance, a stance that portended to how the day was going to pan out. As usual, I was straight up and down. My cheeks tensed, waiting for what inclination she might show next. Jesus, when did I become such a hard-ass? Gracefully, she always moved with grace, she moved to the window, ostensibly to look out at the ocean. Yeah, as usual my breath got stuck in my throat, like a splinter off a piece of drift-wood. I could look at her curves all day. I moved behind her. I wondered if today would find us at another impasse; while she pretended that elephant wasn't in the room. I tried to relax my posterior, but it was like it had been injected with botox, and the damn crack wouldn't stop smiling, even though my heart was as tortured as ever. She wasn't tense. She sashayed, to and fro and kept looking out, kept staring at the great beyond. I'd had enough, I couldn't face her fanny belieing all we had meant, all we had wanted and hoped for. The cruelty of its perfect form mocked us. I knew I couldn't stand anymore, that I would tear myself away, when she moved back. Great glory, she moved back. Her arms reaching behind her pulled against my bottom, as my hands reached around and pulled her bottom into me. We pulsed, we moved, we gyrated, we got naked...and the elephant moved on; at least for today."
What show is your fan fiction based on? Where can we read it?
You probably already know this, but if the show is still in production you can try to sell it. If you ever plan to write for television, you should hang onto it as an example that you're a competent writer for that particular genre. Before considering you as a serious television writer, you'll asked to produce a script for a similar show as a tryout. You'd be shocked how many television writers got their start writing an episode of The Simpsons, for example.
Not that you want to write for television, but maybe the exercise will be more fruitful than you realize.
