Self Pub Saga Part 3 - A Defense of Fanfiction

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Let's go back in time to 2006. I am a rejected actress and a rejected author (see all that here). I have lost people close to me and I have no idea what to do with myself. I drown my sorrows in cheap DVD sets of TV shows from the bargain bin. That's when I stumbled on a certain show that had me passionately shipping a certain couple and a certain outcome. Neither happened and I won't go into the angsty whining I did. I'm sure you've been there.

The point is that I started writing what I would like to see happen. And there were a lot of people who wanted the same thing. It was addictive. Not only did I have a built-in readership who wanted to read what little old me was writing. But I could jump right into the action, whether of the investigative or violent variety, or the smutty. There was no exposition needed, since no one reads a fic without already knowing the characters. And there were comments and reviews that were always so complimentary.

The thing about fic is that, if people don't like it, they usually click away rather than leave a nasty comment. Anyone who trolls fic is usually booted from the forum or community quickly because most of us know the guts it takes to put our writing out there, even under a pseudonym.  Between the praise and the "please post more soon" and the camaraderie, I was hooked.

It also just so happened that those stories were smutty. As much as I shied away from the smutty bits in my rejected original works, I embraced it here.

I found out I was pretty good at smut, at making it seem different each time, at only inserting a sex scene when it had a reason to exist. I think the fact that I was writing for an audience, always thinking of what they might think of how I'm serving the characters, helped me judge when the smut was serving the story or was just there for titillation. I had eyes on me and I learned.

Also, with the fact that my real name had no risk in this, I branched out. I wrote things that were more horror-based, action-based, dark stuff, crack!fic, all in the safety of my fandom. I just felt very free to play around in a way I might not with the pressure of "will this be successful?" We'd do events and request fics and just always stretch our writing muscles.

I think fic is a valuable training ground,  great way to grow as a writer. I know that there are some authors or showrunners who frown on fic or who can even be litigious about people playing with their characters. But I think, once a work enters into fandom, part of it belongs to the audience. And much like a cover song or a meme, people like to leave their stamp on things in a public way. It's done out of love for the characters and the world they live in, even if it's also born out of that frustration of not getting what you want.

For me, it's almost like someone writing a spec fic for a TV show, except without being kept within the boundaries of the show's style. The fic author develops their own style of writing, slowly but surely until, at least for me and some of my close friends, they're ready to branch out and take what they learned on the road. The show I wrote for is long gone, but I made friends who are now professional writers and editors thanks to fandom and fic. And we encourage each other to write, check each others' work, and build each other up when we're blocked.

There is a downside, of course, and it's that fic can be hard to escape. You get addicted to the easy high of comments and kudos and the safety of the nest is hard to leave. It's hard to get up the confidence to put that work in front of virtual strangers or *gasp* expect to be paid. Who the hell am I to be paid for this? I'm just some girl who writes smutty fics. Do I really think my own characters and my own world can be as interesting as ones written by a team of professionals and played by charismatic actors?

Well, I don't know. But I'm still going to try. The point is that fanfic is a safe training ground, an encouraging environment in which to grow as a writer, and I would have put away my idea of writing for good if fic hadn't helped me out. So it's a good thing my show had such a crappy ending!

To be continued in...

Self Pub Saga Part 3: How Many Drafts Does It Take?!

Self Pub Saga Part 2 - Rejection, Redemption, and Fanfiction

Previously, I touched on my having the gall to write a romance novel. Now, I'd written what I considered to be balm to some of the novels I'd been reading. I didn't have insta-lust, my heroine wasn't pursued by every man ever, my hero wasn't a billionaire, and I devoted a lot of time  to the relationships outside the romance. After all that, I had convinced myself sending to a chick-lit imprint was legit, especially after I significantly toned down the sex scenes.

So I sent it off and, though the letter I received back is in a box somewhere, I remember the gist. She said she really enjoyed it, even though it didn't fit with them, but she liked my humor and my voice and dialogue. She had a friend at HQN and asked if I was okay with her sending it off to her. I was!

That friend's name was Abby and I later took her first name as my pen name because she was nice and encouraging and because I always thought Abby was a sweet name (Incidentally, my first initial is also A and I picked Wheeler based on my last name beginning with W). By the time I emailed her to follow up, Abby said it was with her boss and that she really liked it. Sadly, her boss didn't love the story, though she also liked my "fresh, engaging voice." Abby was nice enough to send it on to a friend at AVON.

I felt so encouraged, at this time, having gotten such personal responses even if they amounted to rejection, that I started quickly writing and even finishing another romance. This time, the plot involved a girl shamelessly chasing a boy. Because you often see the opposite in romance and I thought it would be fun to flip that dynamic.

During this time, I sent synopses and queries on both stories to several agents, but all seemed to have the same response: good voice, fun moments, characters great, plot meh.

By the time Avon got back to me, the response was "It’s got lots of delightful moments, but to me it didn’t scream Avon—it had many trappings of smaller category romance that kept me from falling madly in love." I did send both Abby and the Avon lady my second manuscript, but they thought my heroine came off nutty. I still contend that I can make this premise work, but that's down the road. I've had this couple in my head for 12 years now and that has to mean something!

Anyhow, I was feeling discouraged, but determined to doctor these up and try again. After being rejected for my looks so often in my Hollywood endeavors, it was at least refreshing to be rejected for my mind. I would pick those books up again and make them better, damn it!

Then everything in my life came to a screeching halt.

I lost two relatives in six months. As these were people I took care of, involved in my day-to-day life, and extremely important to me, I put writing away. I considered it wasted time, then. I put away the idea of writing. Why bother to send these things off just to be rejected? I also put away the idea of acting and singing and comedy. I wasn't in the best place, looking back and my decision to kind of give up on everything was colored by my grieving.

It took more than two years for me to write again. And it wasn't a novel that pulled me back in. See, I'm a shipper. I'm the worst kind of shipper. I ship couples that almost NEVER get together

The frustration of shipping led me to read fanfiction. and, much like when I read romance, I felt a certain yearning --  always looking for a certain kind of fic and not finding it or reading a great one only to wish this or that had been different. So I wrote one. And the addiction began...

To be continued in...

Self Pub Saga Part 3 - In Defense of Fanfiction

Self Pub Saga - Part 1 - Who the hell am I to be a writer?

As this blog started, oh so many years ago, with me trying to dust off and polish up a long-neglected, twice-rejected novel -- that one I am still fond of calling "the turd," I thought I'd go into the navel-gazing journey of it all just in case someone else out there might want to trace my path and try this out.

SPOILER ALERT!

In 2005, this girl who we will call Abby (real name is a sekrit!) decided she would try writing a novel. Who knows why she thought she could pull that off? Her history as a writer was sketchy, at best. In grade school, she wrote a horror story where, in her youthful ignorance, she named the main villain after a pasta dish. She thought it sounded like a cool name. Her family, to this day, still taunts her with ghoulish echoes of "Manicoooootti!" Needless to say, the teasing sort of curtailed her enthusiasm for the whole thing. She did keep a very dramatic diary from the age of 12 to about 17, something she still reads while cringe-laughing whenever she happens upon it.

In high school, she wrote essays and she was pretty good at it. Good enough that, in college, she might have written papers and presentations for other students. Yeah, not ethical. She knows, but... Okay, I'm going to drop the third person. It's no longer cute. Anyway, I know my academic ghostwriting career, while lucrative, wasn't super ethical. But legit work-studies were hard to get and I always told myself it was better to be the person hired than the person hiring. I was bettering myself in new subjects. In the real world, responsibilities are often delegated, blah, blah, shaky defense, blah.

I did take some creative writing classes and I suppose my stories were okay, but I never considered myself a writer. Besides some blogging, mostly about TV and general whining, I thought it was a fun hobby. So what moved me, in 2005, to suddenly try writing a novel? Boredom, mostly. I was pursuing a career as an actress/singer and I wanted something productive to do while waiting around on set, long cattle calls, something to take my mind off the rejection... to be replaced with a whole new kind of rejection.

I kept wishing I could write a great horror (without the pasta) or mystery or one of those coming-of-age tales that becomes an indie darling of cinema. But it turns out most of the plots I came up with tended to focus on a romance. So why not go with it?

I spent a summer writing in a notebook, then cleaning it up as I very slowly (at the time) typed, reading it to some trusted family members as I went. I wanted it be funny and sexy and maybe a bit less fantasy-oriented than some of the romances I pretended I never read, less of those tropes romance novels are skewered for in articles like this one that I definitely did not write under my real name. 

I DIDN'T WANT TO WRITE THAT BOOK!

I wanted the heroine to be less than gorgeous, the sex to be less than perfect. I wanted to avoid rich people, making all other women tramps, and various other tropes. I guess I just wanted to write the kind of book I would want to read. In the end, I actually thought it was more chick-lit than romance, so I sent it to a publisher that specialized in that and was also taking full manuscripts.

It obviously turned out perfectly and I am now a beacon to young girls and women alike, all clutching my tales to their hearts and telling me I taught them what love truly is! My life is spent wining and dining and book-signing.

Well, obviously not. But it did look pretty hopeful for a time, when I sent my manuscript off to Red Dress Ink. What happened next? Eh, I'll tell you about it tomorrow in...

Part 2 - Rejection, Redemption, and Fanfiction

An actual book... for real this time

A bare handful of people might have read my previous saga, way back in 2012 or so, where I was trying to polish up a story originally written in 2005 and thinking (blind fool that I am) that I could make that same story work in an age where technology has grown, where m/f relations have changed, and where TV has become so good that people watch it. Oh, no. I have given that one up... for now. I still love the idea of "enemies with benefits" and I plan to revamp, revise, revisit in good time, but for now...

Cut to 5 years later and I am trying again, this time with something fresh. A short romance, a New Adult romance, a Romantic Comedy (heavy on the comedy), you might even call it mildly paranormal...

The last thing Jake wanted to do with his summer break was volunteer at a flea market, but add in his best friend Molly and a heavy heaping of guilt and he was stuck wasting a perfectly nice day hauling boxes around for old ladies. But then he saw her -- Juliet, his high school crush. A girl so perfect, he couldn't even speak to her then, and it was no different now. 

Of course, that was until one of the old ladies let him test drive her magic crystals. He'd only taken it to be polite. It wasn't like he was stupid enough to believe in the damned things, but suddenly his dream girl was talking to him and maybe even flirting. That was when things took a turn for the worse...

It was as if the damned crystals turned him into some version of Don Juan gone haywire and he's suddenly mauling his poor best friend, Molly, every time she's within three feet. It's insane! It's unnatural! It should be illegal! But then again...

COMING VERY SOON!