"Out from Fanfic" - coming soon!

Discover how fanfiction can ignite your journey to writing original fiction!

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

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I’ve got an exciting project in the works that’s been several years in the making! No, wait…ten years? Twenty? THIRTY YEARS???

It’s a grand tale that started when I was a young girl, was rudely interrupted by years of personal tragedy, and then came roaring back to life in my late thirties.

I am, of course, talking about fanfiction.

But I am not talking about writing a specific fanfic…I mean, I am, actually, currently writing a fanfic (The Bastards of Yunmeng, check it out!) but the project I am talking about here is more meta than that:

I’ve started writing my next non-fiction book, Out from Fanfic: A Transformation of Creative Freedom.

This is a story that is both memoir and guidebook, an amalgamation of everything I have learned about writing and storytelling through the unconventional path of writing fanfiction. I will be talking about how fanfiction jumpstarted my early, childish attempts at writing; how falling into fanfiction communities in 2008 probably saved not just my life but also my creative drive; and how writing one million words of fanfiction led directly to getting my first original novel published by an indie press in 2011.

From there, I’ll be talking about how writing fanfiction helped me (and continues to help me) refine my craft, and was instrumental in discovering exactly what kind of writer I am.

But the other half of the coin is explaining how I did it, and the lessons I learned that can help other fanfiction writers who want to make the leap out from fanfiction to writing their own, full fledged original fiction. The “how to” section breaks down why fanfiction is so much fun to write, and what lessons we can take from that to apply to our own work.

One thing a lot of writers who try to make that leap say is that original fiction is just not as much fun as fanfiction. The energy and joy they get from writing fanfic is poof!!!! gone. Writing original fiction becomes onerous, even if they are writing something they were and possibly still are excited about at some level. What happened?

I know many fanfiction writers who have already made the jump to original fiction (you probably do too!), but I also know many who either are too scared to try, or believe that they “failed” when they did try. My goal is for this book to have something helpful for fanfiction writers no matter what stage they are at with their original fiction, whether professionally published or just starting out.

The first myth I tackle is the idea that the biggest challenge that people face when transitioning from fanfiction to original fiction is how to write a story. Unfortunately, most of the advice given is the same generic advice for any generic newbie writers: study craft, read up on techniques, maybe take some writing classes.

While this is solid advice for every writer—because we all should be studying our craft no matter our experience level—it isn’t    helpful for someone who has already written tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of words and stories that are well-received and popular in their own fandoms.

In other words, it’s generally not a craft problem, it’s a mindset problem.

So, what do I mean when I say it’s about mindset? As I mentioned earlier, one of the problems writers experience when switching from fanfiction to original fiction is a loss of interest in their own, unique stories. This is often blamed on the idea that fanfiction writers just want an easy route and that writing, as a creative endeavor, should be difficult and painful.

Unfortunately, too many new authors believe this misinformation and decide they aren’t cut out to be writers of original fiction.

I counter that with my belief, which is supported by my experience and the experiences of other authors who have successfully made the switch, is that writing is meant to be enjoyable. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, nor does it mean it is never frustrating, difficult, or annoying. It can be all those things!

The bottom line is that when you’re telling stories you feel passionate about, you should be having a good time.

Fanfiction writers move from an environment where they are completely enchanted with the characters and stories to one where they feel overwhelmed by choices and expectations. This sense of overwhelm comes from having too many options. If you have an infinite number of choices, how do you choose? Which leads us to the actual problem in play: such writers either don’t know why they love their fanfiction in the first place, or they mistakenly believe that what they love about their fanfiction doesn’t apply to original fiction.

“Out from Fanfic” teaches you how to make decisions about what to write and the characters you’re going to write about in a way that resonates with the same joy and love you feel when writing fanfiction. It is designed to help writers find the same joy in writing original fiction that they find in writing fanfiction.

Though I’m still working on this book, I’m announcing it now because I plan to serialize chapters-in-progress here on my blog.

These chapters will be available for free on the Scriptorium for two weeks, after which they will be archived and accessible only to paying patrons. I don’t usually lock down my work to paid subscribers, but since this is a work-in-progress and will undergo many changes before the final version is published early next year, I want to control the versions that people see while still allowing followers to get a sneak peek at what’s coming.

I’ll probably post the first installment in the next week or so, so be on the lookout for that. This project has been a long time in the making, and I’m very excited about it. I hope you are too!

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