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O.F. = Original Fiction.
I'm going back to school yet again in September at the University of Missouri - St. Louis for Creative Writing because I want to and because it pushes off huge and looming college loan repayments yet again and because I have this uncontrollable urge to educate myself in things that really quite feasibly cannot get me future employment. Lord knows why. I certainly don't need more "life" experiences and to do this shit for that reason at my age is sort of... sad? Lame as fuck?
But off to school I go in September. Sort of like the lesbian Rodney Dangerfield in Back To School except I'm not as funny as he is and I don't have money like he did and I don't have a nerdy son who for some reason thinks being on the college swim team is cool. We're both going back to school though. That's similar. Anyway!
I'm going back to school for Creative Writing and wouldn't you know it, gee willikers, the writing courses there, well, they don't really groove with writing fanfic. lol. I don't know this for certain but I would imagine that the stuff my classes would require might entail writing the much touted original fiction. I find this situation perversely funny because since I was sixteen I've written fanfic and since that time I have ALWAYS despised the snotty ass fanfic writers who proclaimed that lowly fanfic was merely a stepping stone for their fabulous future career as a professional writer. And then they'd proceed to post their fucking original fic to goddamn fanfic mailing lists and boards as if the fans who subscribed to read about Willow and Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame care about the lives of dyke firefighter Elyssa St. Marie and her love interest the shy gardener Molly McGee. Of course, whenever someone bitched it was immediately claimed they were alternate universe versions of whatever fandom characters.
Right, because being boring as fuck and nowhere close to the characters the fandom board/mailing list is based on is fucking alternate universe. It's not. It's lame as fuck and stop posting you stupid dumbass. No one wants to read about Elyssa and Molly. They suck and so do you. Quit it.
But for years I hated that stupid ass trend where people sort of denigrated fanfic as being this tool to progress to this hallowed higher level that was original fiction. And usually the people who were obsessed with this were the fanfic writers I thought were shitty as fuck and had no chance of succeeding professionally. While the fic writers I loved had no aspirations because they were somewhat like myself as in fanfic was a longtime hobby that they loved and not this manic dream of a potential career.
I'm not someone thinks badly of herself. I don't insult myself to get sympathy or chicks or any of those douchey psychological reasons we're used to. I mostly do it for laughs. I have a fairly decent ego and the only reason I'm telling you this is because even now I don't particularly think I have the talent, attention span, or the drive to become a professional writer. I'm not even sure the ideas I come up creatively are things I can feasibly execute. For years I've thought this. Ever since I started writing, this has been in my head. It's entirely different for me to write fanfic which consists of a fan's interpretation of already established characters and storylines. Coming up with new shit on my own? Having the responsibility of just fucking creating a person out of nothing and somehow making that fake person entertaining enough that real people want to read about them?
Yeahhhhhh.
Not so sure I can pull that off. Never have been. But I love writing and I fell into writing fanfic. Now for some unknown reason here I am, about to go back to school to try this shit. I'm not scared, well, at least I'm not scared right now but I know I will be on my first day back, but I'm just sort of lost as to how I thought this was a good idea. Or how I came up with this impulse. I could go back through my LJ archives to look for the post where I blathered on about going to school for writing but I'm fucking lazy and I don't think I really need to know.
I do get ideas for stories but that's it. Ideas and really nothing more. I could try to flesh them out but I never have and honestly, it's horrible to say this, but I'm not sure where the fuck I put all my notebooks and floppy disks and various other crap that contained these ideas. I stopped doing that stuff when I was around twenty and decided that I'd just write fanfic and sort of shelve all ideas for writing original fiction. Lately I've been getting these ideas back though.
The one I just had started just with the fucking opening lines popping into my head. It's sad to say I get that all the time. One fucking line from a story, usually the first line, and then the rest of the shit comes from there. I'm not sure how the fuck this happens but it does. But I was driving to evil ass Things Remembered to work on Mother's Day when these lines suddenly show up. Be warned I don't have any ideas for the character name or even the character gender. I just decided it would most likely be a girl but I don't know. Anyway, the lack of name is the reason for the annoying [Character] shit. Just deal, okay? But here goes the opening lines...
[Character] could never make that fabled connection. The one you made with other people, whether it be in friendship or romance, [Character] found herself simply unable. Oh, it wasn't like she didn't try and it wasn't like she didn't socialize. [Character] socialized plenty. Enough to trick everyone around her into thinking she had made that connection. That she had found people who truly understood and knew her but she hadn't and she was beginning to doubt she ever would.
Yeah, weird as fuck, isn't it? That shit popping into my head.
From there I started thinking about writing this character who is socially adept but feels disconnected from people around them and doesn't really feel that they have people they can truly count on and really know them. And this is something that leads to both denial of this reality and often deep depression they hide. The story would be a fucking douchey journey of them trying to move beyond fun and light hearted social interactions to finding that connection they want so badly they can feel it.
How do they find that? I thought it was be an interesting concept to have that person find their connection and acceptance and even love through online chatting and other online social interaction. To have that juxtaposition of being so close emotionally with a person but to be connecting through this sort of distant and cold machinery.
I'm sort of sadly excited by this idea because I'm a huge nerd who has been online chatting since I was a kid and I love my online friends and my online communities. I truly think that in many ways it's so great to be involved in online relationships. I have never been involved with online romance because it sort of squicked me out but I have friends who've done that and are still together with the person they fell for and it just... despite the squick factor sort of appeals to that dorky romantic in me. Honestly, online relationships are great because they're based off of personality and depth, looks are very much not involved in the online relationships with substance and it's also faith. You're pretty much leaping out into this scary great unknown because there's a lack of visualization.
Meaning you can't SEE this person you're connecting with. You have to see them in your mind and in a fucked up way it's sort of similar to a religious experience in that manner. Trusting your heart and not your immediate senses. Go with what you feel or some shit.
Of course, I know the internet is not the fucking Garden of Eden and I don't endorse people who lock themselves away in basement dwellings and cut off all contact with the real world to play Everquest: The Elves Get More Pornographic IV. I just think it has a lot of good in it and I do truly value all of the various online friendships I have gained over the years. I often feel closer to my online friends than to the ones I have right next to me in St. Louis.
So there is my first original fiction idea. I don't know if it's good or bad or even something I want to develop but it's the first one I've had in a long ass time and I felt the need to share it. Please don't feel the fucking need to critique or comment or be all supportive in this stupid ass writing venture. I didn't post this for fucking pats on the back. I posted it because I'm a blabber mouth dyke who likes to prattle and I don't expect people to really listen, read, or respond because honestly? Blabbering is my natural state of being and I know people don't listen to me 99% of the time.
And I'm fine with that because I don't need you to listen. I just need you to let me prattle. But if you did read all this stupid shit here's a fucking free song reward because I haven't shared music in awhile and that's almost criminal when it comes to my music nerd self.
...Long Time Ago by Concrete Blonde:
http://www.dreiser.net/mp3/longtimeago.mp3
I'm going back to school yet again in September at the University of Missouri - St. Louis for Creative Writing because I want to and because it pushes off huge and looming college loan repayments yet again and because I have this uncontrollable urge to educate myself in things that really quite feasibly cannot get me future employment. Lord knows why. I certainly don't need more "life" experiences and to do this shit for that reason at my age is sort of... sad? Lame as fuck?
But off to school I go in September. Sort of like the lesbian Rodney Dangerfield in Back To School except I'm not as funny as he is and I don't have money like he did and I don't have a nerdy son who for some reason thinks being on the college swim team is cool. We're both going back to school though. That's similar. Anyway!
I'm going back to school for Creative Writing and wouldn't you know it, gee willikers, the writing courses there, well, they don't really groove with writing fanfic. lol. I don't know this for certain but I would imagine that the stuff my classes would require might entail writing the much touted original fiction. I find this situation perversely funny because since I was sixteen I've written fanfic and since that time I have ALWAYS despised the snotty ass fanfic writers who proclaimed that lowly fanfic was merely a stepping stone for their fabulous future career as a professional writer. And then they'd proceed to post their fucking original fic to goddamn fanfic mailing lists and boards as if the fans who subscribed to read about Willow and Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame care about the lives of dyke firefighter Elyssa St. Marie and her love interest the shy gardener Molly McGee. Of course, whenever someone bitched it was immediately claimed they were alternate universe versions of whatever fandom characters.
Right, because being boring as fuck and nowhere close to the characters the fandom board/mailing list is based on is fucking alternate universe. It's not. It's lame as fuck and stop posting you stupid dumbass. No one wants to read about Elyssa and Molly. They suck and so do you. Quit it.
But for years I hated that stupid ass trend where people sort of denigrated fanfic as being this tool to progress to this hallowed higher level that was original fiction. And usually the people who were obsessed with this were the fanfic writers I thought were shitty as fuck and had no chance of succeeding professionally. While the fic writers I loved had no aspirations because they were somewhat like myself as in fanfic was a longtime hobby that they loved and not this manic dream of a potential career.
I'm not someone thinks badly of herself. I don't insult myself to get sympathy or chicks or any of those douchey psychological reasons we're used to. I mostly do it for laughs. I have a fairly decent ego and the only reason I'm telling you this is because even now I don't particularly think I have the talent, attention span, or the drive to become a professional writer. I'm not even sure the ideas I come up creatively are things I can feasibly execute. For years I've thought this. Ever since I started writing, this has been in my head. It's entirely different for me to write fanfic which consists of a fan's interpretation of already established characters and storylines. Coming up with new shit on my own? Having the responsibility of just fucking creating a person out of nothing and somehow making that fake person entertaining enough that real people want to read about them?
Yeahhhhhh.
Not so sure I can pull that off. Never have been. But I love writing and I fell into writing fanfic. Now for some unknown reason here I am, about to go back to school to try this shit. I'm not scared, well, at least I'm not scared right now but I know I will be on my first day back, but I'm just sort of lost as to how I thought this was a good idea. Or how I came up with this impulse. I could go back through my LJ archives to look for the post where I blathered on about going to school for writing but I'm fucking lazy and I don't think I really need to know.
I do get ideas for stories but that's it. Ideas and really nothing more. I could try to flesh them out but I never have and honestly, it's horrible to say this, but I'm not sure where the fuck I put all my notebooks and floppy disks and various other crap that contained these ideas. I stopped doing that stuff when I was around twenty and decided that I'd just write fanfic and sort of shelve all ideas for writing original fiction. Lately I've been getting these ideas back though.
The one I just had started just with the fucking opening lines popping into my head. It's sad to say I get that all the time. One fucking line from a story, usually the first line, and then the rest of the shit comes from there. I'm not sure how the fuck this happens but it does. But I was driving to evil ass Things Remembered to work on Mother's Day when these lines suddenly show up. Be warned I don't have any ideas for the character name or even the character gender. I just decided it would most likely be a girl but I don't know. Anyway, the lack of name is the reason for the annoying [Character] shit. Just deal, okay? But here goes the opening lines...
[Character] could never make that fabled connection. The one you made with other people, whether it be in friendship or romance, [Character] found herself simply unable. Oh, it wasn't like she didn't try and it wasn't like she didn't socialize. [Character] socialized plenty. Enough to trick everyone around her into thinking she had made that connection. That she had found people who truly understood and knew her but she hadn't and she was beginning to doubt she ever would.
Yeah, weird as fuck, isn't it? That shit popping into my head.
From there I started thinking about writing this character who is socially adept but feels disconnected from people around them and doesn't really feel that they have people they can truly count on and really know them. And this is something that leads to both denial of this reality and often deep depression they hide. The story would be a fucking douchey journey of them trying to move beyond fun and light hearted social interactions to finding that connection they want so badly they can feel it.
How do they find that? I thought it was be an interesting concept to have that person find their connection and acceptance and even love through online chatting and other online social interaction. To have that juxtaposition of being so close emotionally with a person but to be connecting through this sort of distant and cold machinery.
I'm sort of sadly excited by this idea because I'm a huge nerd who has been online chatting since I was a kid and I love my online friends and my online communities. I truly think that in many ways it's so great to be involved in online relationships. I have never been involved with online romance because it sort of squicked me out but I have friends who've done that and are still together with the person they fell for and it just... despite the squick factor sort of appeals to that dorky romantic in me. Honestly, online relationships are great because they're based off of personality and depth, looks are very much not involved in the online relationships with substance and it's also faith. You're pretty much leaping out into this scary great unknown because there's a lack of visualization.
Meaning you can't SEE this person you're connecting with. You have to see them in your mind and in a fucked up way it's sort of similar to a religious experience in that manner. Trusting your heart and not your immediate senses. Go with what you feel or some shit.
Of course, I know the internet is not the fucking Garden of Eden and I don't endorse people who lock themselves away in basement dwellings and cut off all contact with the real world to play Everquest: The Elves Get More Pornographic IV. I just think it has a lot of good in it and I do truly value all of the various online friendships I have gained over the years. I often feel closer to my online friends than to the ones I have right next to me in St. Louis.
So there is my first original fiction idea. I don't know if it's good or bad or even something I want to develop but it's the first one I've had in a long ass time and I felt the need to share it. Please don't feel the fucking need to critique or comment or be all supportive in this stupid ass writing venture. I didn't post this for fucking pats on the back. I posted it because I'm a blabber mouth dyke who likes to prattle and I don't expect people to really listen, read, or respond because honestly? Blabbering is my natural state of being and I know people don't listen to me 99% of the time.
And I'm fine with that because I don't need you to listen. I just need you to let me prattle. But if you did read all this stupid shit here's a fucking free song reward because I haven't shared music in awhile and that's almost criminal when it comes to my music nerd self.
...Long Time Ago by Concrete Blonde:
http://www.dreiser.net/mp3/longtimeago.mp3
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If you want a random other weird story idea: Stonehenge in Brazil!
Look at them weird jagged rocks. Robert E. Howard (Conan Man) wrote a story called "The Black Stone" about a black obelisk in Hungary that was a tool of some weird cult and mutated local animals and stuff and was basically a shunned, cursed place. First thing I thought of when I saw those pics. The story is old enough it should be public domain but it's not hosted online anywhere. But anyway. What can I say? I do not have to make up weird ideas, the news is happy to do it for me.
Teh Sexay and I met online, even if we didn't end up staying together, we did make it five years.
Also: "Everquest: The Elves Get More Pornographic IV" made me giggle.
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I'm glad I made you giggle. I live for making girls giggle, sad as that might sound. Plus I hate Everquest. Oh! Dude, do you have time to make it to a convention this year? I've already talked to Erica and Pat about it and Erica is willing to pretty much let us pick which convention to hang out at. I'm wanting Anime Central in Chicago just because... well, I always travel to other people for conventions and I could actually drive to that one.
We've also talked to Teh Sexay about it as well.
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http://media.filmforce.ign.com/media/040/040731/vids_1.html