Fanfiction

How fAnfiction made me a Writer


I wrote fanfiction before I knew what it was.

It happened when I was in junior high, and my younger sister, my younger brother, and all my younger cousins were going crazy over this new pokemon craze sweeping the nation. (In case you can't tell, I'm old.) They wouldn't shut up about the cards, they rented videos of the T.V. show at Blockbusters, they spent long car rides discussing stats and types and evolutions. I was forced to learn about pokemon just to have a conversation with them. Then I got hooked. I bought the trading cards, I watched the T.V. shows, I memorized the stats--and I started making up my own characters. I loved Team Rocket, but I got annoyed that they never won. So I made up a cool new character: Jesse's older sister, Jaquie, a member of Team Rocket, who was great at her job.

As I entered high school, I decided it was time to start pursuing my dream of being a writer. It was going to write a novel. One problem: I had no idea what to write. However, I had been telling my sister and brother and cousins pokemon stories to amuse them. And I had a great idea for Jaquie. Although she was the second-in-command in charge of Team Rocket, she was disgruntled. Team Rocket had cost Jaquie her family, and she was going to get revenge on Giovanni by swiping the criminal organization from him right under his feet. But first, she had one final job--an island full of super strong pokemon. However, when Jesse, James, and Meowth stow away, Jaquie has to balance battling these new pokemon and protecting her sister, all the while keeping her secret under wrap.

Since this was as close to a novel idea as I had, I decided to go for it. My dad, who's incredibly supportive of my writing career, actually paid me an allowance based on my writing. I had to produce one chapter a week, either written or typed, to make my money. After 4 long years, I finished The Team Rocket Chronicles. My dad read it and cried, he loved the ending so much.
​
At this point, I still didn't know what fanfiction was.
​
Picture
First novel I ever wrote was pokemon fanfiction.

I learned when I was in college. My friend Ashley introduced me to the concept, and I quickly found that there was nothing like scanning fanfics for taking the edge of studying. At this point in time, I was nursing a huge crush on Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh (I'm a geek), and I'd just been introduced to Rurouni Kenshin. One random day, I got an idea for a funny story and wrote it down. I published it on Fanfiction.net--my first story.

I wasn't supposed to write fanfiction, or so I thought. I was supposed to be focusing on my serious novel, a massive epic fantasy called The Changelings. But I kept coming back to fanfiction, whenever I needed a break. I abandoned several stories. I kept getting frustrated because I couldn't seem to describe. I'd write pages and pages and pages, and all it did was bog the story down. I hated my writing.

I reached my low point when I was studying abroad in Japan. I seriously wondered if I should quit writing. It was a cold, bleak February, something I was unused to since I hail from Southern California, and I was lonely and homesick and my Grandpa was dying and would die before I made it back to America. In this state, I suddenly had an idea for a fanfiction story. It was about Seto Kaiba, and how, as he was gaining power, he became colder and colder, rejecting the only person he cared for: his younger brother. For some reason, writing the story made me feel better in this dark time.

But as I began looking over the description, I had an idea. Rather than throwing in more and more words, I began to cut them out, focusing only on the words that carried the most meaning. The story got stronger. It clicked in my mind, like the turn of a key: I understood how to describe. After two and a half years of desperately trying to learn how to describe, suddenly I knew how to do it.

I began writing my novel again.

Picture
Learning description from Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction.

In 2007, I graduated with a BA in Crafting Fantasy: Creative Writing, History, and Japanese. My novel, The Changelings, was not even close to being finished, so I took a job as a teacher's aid with the JET Programme, landing in beautiful Kagoshima Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. I got into the Ranma 1/2 series, and I began to go down the rabbit hole of "shipping." I didn't care much for the main couple, but I wanted Ryoga to end up with someone nice. While on a trip to Hiroshima, I printed out "Omiyage" by Ninnik Nishukan, which was one of the best romance stories I'd ever read. It bought me on Ryoga and Ukyo as a couple.

So, I decided to shamelessly do my own quasi-romance of the couple.
I'd just read Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King, and I decided to practice. I milked as much romance as I could, and I was actually rather pleased. My description was getting better. Still, I wasn't getting much in the way of readers.

It wasn't until I half-thinkingly published my first Kuno x Nabiki, "Umbrella of Lies," that I actually got people reviewing. I'd written the story solely because there wasn't a whole lot of stories about the couple. Apparently, others agreed. The demand was there. But I wasn't a romance writer and my ending sort of soured my audience. So I set out to do a sequel.

I tried my darndest to write a romance and a humorous romance at that. I struggled. I revised. I pulled out all my writing tricks and learned some new ones in the process. I had the story outlined, so I knew where it was going, but it took me days, then weeks, then months to write and edit each subsequent chapter, going through as many as five or six drafts.

That story, I Want a Refund, was my most successful story on fanfiction, by far. For the first time, I got massive feedback from my story. People liked it--even in genres I felt unsure about. I started to feel confident. I'd been consistently writing fanfiction for over 10 years, and finally, it was starting to pay off.
​
Picture
Nabiki and Kuno, my favorite Ranma 1/2 pairing
I don't write fanfiction as much anymore.

I don't have time. I published The Changelings and finally published it in 2015. I've been working on a sequel to it, The Originals, as well as some stand alone novels: Three Floating Coffins, Isra and Grim, and Counterfeit Diamond. Although I don't have as much time to read or write it, fanfiction will always hold a place in my heart, because it helped me become a writer.

And if I wrote a few good novels along the way, so much the better.

A List of mY Fanfics


​My less-than-well-updated account on fanfiction.net is listed under Red Dragonfly. My stories include:
​