I keep forgetting to mention this but I finally put up the writing section about a month back. It has been a long missing “feature” from a previous version of The Edge. In it is the only short story that I managed to save during the hard-disk crash of ’04; Grains of Sand.
Looking at it now, a lot of parts are cringe-worthy but the sad thing is I very much doubt that I can do any better even with the time gap. If anything, I’ll be much worse due to the lack of usage of my mono-lingual skills.
I’ll try to dig up some other short stories that may be hidden off somewhere, but most likely they are even older than GoS and thus, terrible. Oh well, what is a blog but to save and treasure one’s embarrassing moments?
Another embarrassing point is that most of what I write is technically term as “fan-fiction“, mainly because I like to use established story worlds. I usually try not to use characters that other people have created and come up with my own, but still it falls under that category which is usually a derogatory term when referring to writings.
I always have some ideas for Originals, but somehow they hardly ever see completion. I hope to be able to complete another one soon. There is just some drive or muse missing to spark and fuel the project.
Okay. Ready?
First, I wouldn’t necessarily refer to fan-fiction as a derogatory term. Mainly, because it still produces creative writing. Yes, you use already-existing characters, worlds, and sometimes ideas. But you take these elements and you can set them into a new world, era, drop a character, add a character (or more) and you have a new piece. To me, it’s the same as writing a piece where the characters closely resemble myself or other reallife ppl.
Second, if all you can write is for a fandom, then at least you are writing. As opposed to not writing. Period. And that, in turn, usually generates (at least) one reader. That is one more reader than previously.
Writing as a creative process sometimes seems to be a lost art, but then, so does reading for pleasure. We’re just too busy. So I’m always glad when one of my friends gives it a go. I’ve jumped back into writing, albeit fanfics, like I used to. So yeah… that’s my spiel.
Yeah.. you should go back to writing.
Light. I agree with you 100%. I have nothing against fanfics and agree that it really does take quite a level of creative writing skill to do a good fanfic. After all, one has to stay true to the story world, theme and most importantly, the characters themselves.
The problem here is that fandom is a very general term. I started out writing from creating background stories for characters developed in various pen and paper role-playing games. In a technical and broad definition of fan-fiction, that still counts as fanfic, even though you are supposed to use the given story world and work within it.
I don’t think I made it clear in the post, but what I’m trying to get at is that I do write fanfics and will continue to do so. Problem is, most lay people don’t get it, not having any knowledge of the source material be it book, game or cartoon. And thus would easily have the idea that such stories are of “lesser value” or that the author “can’t cut it” in coming up with his/hers own stuff. I have heard this all before when I suggest to people to read good fanfics of their favorite stories.
So in a way, the above post is sort of an apology to people who may read what future fanfics I will write, when I do, because they may not get it. On top of that, I would love to come up with more original stuff of my own, apart from fandom, to see how far and how well I can do it. Somehow creating your own story world is pretty difficult and is something I mentioned that I can’t seem to complete.
but yeah…I should go back to writing