I recently received an e-mail from Fanfiction.Net, informing me that one of my favorite stories had been recently updated. I have not been an active reader at this website for a little over a year now, and decided to take a look at the story that had been updated.
It was a Charmed fanfic – it was actually one of my favorite stories that I had read on the website. I looked at the date on which it was last published, and saw that the author had not posted for over two years.
This made me instantly think of my own story – you see, from the ages 12-15, I was completely obsessed with fanfiction. I’d spend hours reading Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Charmed, Friends, Lost and other fanfics. Sometimes, I would read a story and think “that’s what the authors/writers” should have done.
Having become so obsessed with this phenomenon, I naturally began writing my own stories. Most of them were never finished, or never got published, but there was one multi-chapter story that I had written for the A Series of Unfortunate Events fandom that I quite enjoyed. I had written eleven chapters, and had half of the twelfth chapter saved on my computer. I had over 150 reviews.
Out of being too busy and just sheer laziness, I stopped updating almost three years ago. When I got this e-mail in my inbox, I thought about how irritating it had been for me to read fanfics that were uncompleted, or which had ended on cliffhangers like mine had done.
The next day, I pulled up my old file and began creating an outline for the last three chapters (I had planned for there to be thirteen chapters and an epilogue). I have finished chapter twelve, although I haven’t posted it, and am three quarters of the way done through chapter thirteen.
I can’t believe that I actually let myself abandon my story for so long, but I’m a little proud of myself for finally finishing this story that I’ve been writing on and off since I was twelve. It’s strange to read over the first couple of chapters, knowing that when I was writing them I was still in seventh grade. I’m hoping to have the story finished by the end of this weekend.
The nice thing about having gotten back into this story is that I can find myself catching the fanfic bug; I’m remembering old story ideas that I had bouncing around in my head, and have taken to reading some more fanfiction during my down time, although nowhere close to how much I used to read when I was younger.
Do you read/write fanfiction? If so, what are you favorite fandom, and pairings? What are your favorite fanfiction sites?
