About Me, Part Two

I wrote a lot in high school. In my first year there I happened to meet a kid that I instantly hit it off with - we seemed to have a lot in common - we were both into computers (such as they were back then), superheroes, reading just about anything that we could get our hands on, and Dr Who. We wrote a bunch of Dr Who-style fanfic back then - most of it involving Time Lords other than the Doctor. It helped that we had an English teacher that gave us one class a week to write in, but we were filling notebooks with stories, regardless. We also worked on a comic together, some simple superhero stuff that was rather quite derivative in retrospect (we were 13 at the time, so cut us a little slack) as far as the type of heroes and villains and powers that they had, but the stories were always something new . He was the more artistic of the two, so by default got to do the artwork, and we both worked on the stories. It was good fun. It was also when I was introduced to RPGs. I had a lot going on in those days, I guess.


Between writing fiction, writing and playing RPGs, working on comics, and reading anything and everything that came my way, I became more and more convinced that this was something that I wanted to do one day. Of course, it's not that simple, and school careers counselors will try to do the right thing and point you towards a good university and a career. Somehow I picked an Arts degree, and decided on Philosophy - so much for that plan, eh?


When I finished high school I bought a Smith Corona Word Processor. Thinking back, that was a stupid move. For the $1,000 I spent on that, I could have got myself an older PC, which would have kept my computer skills up, and given me something other than a glorified typewriter. Of course, I could have studied Law or Engineering or Journalism, as well, so there's not really much point dwelling on the past, I suppose.


I met a lot of interesting people during my university days, wrote a bit, submitted some of my stuff to the university magazine, played some music, and wrote a bunch of songs (all of which were lost when the cassettes that they were recorded on were melted). I wrote lots of everything, I suppose - fiction, plays, poetry - across as many genres as I could. Some of it wasn't bad stuff. Some of it definitely deserved to end in a pyre. Some of it was pretty good, and I wish I still had copies of.


Since then, I've kept writing, and I suppose that's the important part. I've met a bunch of people that tell me they'd love to write (but don't), or have tried writing (but stopped), or wish they had the time (who play a lot of games and watch a lot of movies). At the end of the day, if you want to be a writer, you write. If you want to do something else, you do something else.


So, that's me, I guess. Well, the parts I'm going to talk about, at least. I've got to keep a little mystery to myself, right?

Looking Back At Writing Eria

I wrote Eria a while ago. It was the first novel that I ever really completed. By completed, I mean edited, revised, edited again, and so on, until I had something that I was happy with. To that end I think it's a success.

I've written other things before and after, but I've never bothered to polish them, and revisit them like I did with Eria. Maybe I thought that they were "done", or maybe it was that I was simply done with them. I'm not sure. What I am sure is that I never felt tempted to "do" anything with them again, never felt interested in revisiting the world, or the characters. I think that in and of itself is telling. If, as an author, I don't feel like revisiting these things, why would a reader feel compelled to feel anything for them in the first place?

As I said, I feel differently about Eria. I find myself wondering about what the characters are going to do next, about what they did before, and about the other people and places that are mentioned in the book. I hope that other people that have read it feel that way too.

I've read a lot of novels, stories, plays and so forth (as well as being subjected to a lot of television and movies), and, I believe, the memorable ones are the ones that you want to re-read, the ones you never get sick of reading. They're like old friends, or a comfortable pair of shoes. They just feel right to you.

I've never written fan-fiction, but I've thought about it. Most of the time the fanfic that I would have written plays out in my head, and that's good enough for me. It's like a pleasant daydream, I suppose. It doesn't really seem like a creative process, although I suppose that technically it is.

So, what am I saying? Where is this going?

I suppose the point that I am trying to make is that getting Eria to the stage where I decided to put it up on the Amazon Kindle store has got me thinking more about the world, characters, and so forth, and I'm definitely interested in writing more. Being the person that wrote it in the first place, I can hardly call what I write next fanfic, but it kind of feels that way, at least in my mind.

Is it wrong to enjoy writing more about something you like? Is it self-indulgent? Will people want to read it?

I suppose we'll find out!

Eria