Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Writing from my heart

Back at the beginning of August, I was recovering from a few weeks of terrible, terrible luck.  I was picking myself up, celebrating the few things which had gone right, dusting myself off and refocusing. 

Two of the things I have focused on have been my professional non-fiction and my original fiction.

My professional non-fiction has taken the form of five articles, four already published on LinkedIn as a trial run to my setting up a Substack and a fifth to follow next week. I’ve enjoyed writing about topics which I know well, sharing my learned knowledge and expertise. But that writing has definitely fallen into the category of work.

Unlike my original fiction.

I wrote my first novel at eighteen.  It was a story of Arthur’s return set in a futuristic Britain where the events of Arthur’s conception replayed with fictional members of a royal family.  Written on an old word processor, the only copy I have of it is a printed version in a folder.  I occasionally get it out and reread it.  It’s not a bad story, but I like to think with thirty-two years of more life experience under my belt, I’m a better writer now than I was then.

The next full novel I wrote was in my early twenties.  I was working a full-time job and writing in my spare time.  It was a murder mystery with a gay protagonist.  The Birdcage (1997) probably represents the best depiction of how homosexuality was generally considered in Western society at the time.  In other words, younger generations were accepting, but older generations still had prejudices and bias – and a lot of people still thought to be gay was to be camp or drag or both. 

After touting the novel around a variety of different publishers and agents, if I was lucky to receive a letter of rejection rather than just silence, the letter usually was a variant of “it’s not what we’re looking for right now.”  I labelled those that included statements such as “it’s clear that you can write or it’s a good story and I enjoyed reading it” as ‘nice’ rejections as it was at least some validation that I was able to write a good read.

I considered self-publishing, but couldn’t face the work involved with doing that, partially warned off by many writing magazines and ‘how to’ books which advised against that approach given its usual lack of success. 

A romance novel didn’t go anywhere. 

Writing competitions for short stories came and went without my being placed or honourably mentioned, never mind winning.

I had a partially written Star Trek novel that I never quite got round to finishing.

In 2005, I’d ended up writing the first few stories in what would become my Airwolf series ‘The Lost Season,’ and decided to publish on fanfiction.net (the only place I’d heard of to publish fanfiction at the time) to get some objective feedback about my writing from people who were not my friends and family.

And I got sucked into the world of fanfiction.

It was a balm to my slightly battered writing pride that people liked my stories, and I had people actually following my writing.

And it became easier and easier as my job got more and more demanding, that what little time I had for writing went to fanfiction rather than original fiction.  After all, with fanfiction, I at least got rewarded with some comments or messages of support – and later when I started cross-posting on AO3 and Livejournal/Dreamwidth with likes and kudos.

Not that I stopped writing original fiction.  I have a dozen half-completed projects.  Novels, novellas, short stories…yet I just never found the time to finish them, between my work, my dodgy health, and the lure of fanfiction.

This past year, I’ve made a concerted effort to shift my professional life and refocus on writing which has meant trying to refocus on my original work, non-fiction and fiction, as much as my fanfiction. 

One of the major original projects I planned right from the start of the year was re-writing the murder mystery novel that I once touted around for publication – this time with a view to self-publish via Amazon’s Kindle publishing.  The world of self-publishing has definitely changed with the ability to offer books as digital e-books instead of hard copy/paperback copy prints.  That project is in progress.   

But it’s been a struggle.

It’s been a learning process trying to get the balance of my time right – as those who have read my previous Writing Logs will know.  It’s not just about balancing my writing time, but also ensuring I’m spending time on projects which will pay the bills and still improving my health.

Fanfiction remains a tempting draw as I’m not unknowing of the fact that many subscribers to my website come here for the fanfiction. But I think finally completing one of the major fanfiction projects that I had on my slate, A Jump to the Left, the sequel to one of my most popular Harry Potter stories A Step to the Right, shifted something mentally for me.

Weirdly I find it very difficult to write a sequel when the original story has been so well-received.  I always worry that I’ll disappoint even as I sternly tell myself to write the story in my heart and forget about other people’s expectations, even as I try to live by the mantra in fanfiction to write for myself and not for others. I can’t deny this week, it’s been great to see the positive response to A Jump to the Left.    

Writing A Jump to the Left was very hard.  It was always – and still is – my plan to complete the original five stories I imagined for the series.  But as time and years went on by, it was even harder to pick up the threads and continue writing it.  My muse for it definitely went away for a while.  Getting it complete feels like a major achievement and a major clearing of the decks despite Another Dimension, the next in the series, already replacing it on the to-do list. 

Over August I’ve made good progress on my original fiction, finally tackling in earnest replotting the novel and beginning the re-write.  Moreover, I’ve been inspired to write shorter stories with the characters – prequel teasers of when they first met at University.  I’ve revelled spending time with my characters. 

I’m planning to post the first of the short stories here next week.  I’m hoping even if people are drawn here for the fanfiction that they give my original work a chance too.   

I’ve just loved writing in August. It has reconfirmed that this, this writing from my heart about characters I love is what I should be pursuing. Why? Because it brings me joy.