Writing Fanfic Saved My Life

When I was a very young girl, I lived in a world built inside my head. My external world was a very scary place. My father drank a lot. And when he drank, he got loud and sometimes… he got violent. It was a lot to take in as a child. My internal world often included myself and the characters from a tv show or movie I recently watched. Mostly, it was Bonanza. I loved and still love that show and I wanted Adam Cartwright to be my dad.

It was a safe and loving world. A place where I could live out real scenarios but make the outcome more positive. Little did I know that my childhood fantasies would continue and grow well into adulthood.

You may be asking, what does your childhood fantasies have to do with fanfiction? What the hell is fanfiction? Fanfiction are stories written by fans but using the characters or settings established by someone else in a book, television show or movie.

There are many forms of fanfiction including but not limited to: canon (stories using the characters and settings established and writing stories based of off events in the book, tv show or movie), non-canon (stories using the characters and settings but not using the events established), alternate world (taking the characters and putting them into a setting that is not their own - i.e. taking the characters from Friends and making them astronauts), crossovers (this actually happens in tv shows and can result in a new series). Yes, even television participates in creating fanfiction. This list is nowhere close to being complete.

But I digress from the actual story. I never wrote those stories down until after I graduated from high school. I remember being in my room when my best friend came bursting in.

“I had a dream last night and we were both in it,” she said excitedly. “You have to help me write it down.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied.

She sat down and told me about her vivid and quite enthralling dream. An hour later, she asked again if I would help her write it. Of course, I said yes.

At the time, we were both interested in becoming police officers, so we watched a lot of police related shows. Her dream involved her and I and the characters from The New Mike Hammer television series based off the books written by Mickey Spillane. In this dream she and I owned our own private detective agency and were friends with Mike Hammer and the police Lieutenant, Pat Chambers.

We spent the entire night writing her dream into a notebook by hand. She told me the story and I wrote it down. Once we were finished we had about 30 pages in that notebook. I looked at her and said, “Now that we have the bones, it’s time to get to work.”

It seemed unorthodoxed at the time, but we decided to draft the story together. She would write one chapter from her point of view and I would write the next chapter and back and forth. The crazy thing is that we were writing these chapters at the same time. Personal computers were not available yet and neither of us owned a typewriter. To ensure that we both had copies we used carbon paper. For those unfamiliar, carbon paper was an 8.5 X 11 thin sheet of paper. On one side it was smooth and glossy, the other side was black and if you touched it your fingers would be black.

You would take the carbon and place it between two white sheets of paper with the black side of the carbon paper facing down. Then, when you wrote on the top sheet it would mark the bottom sheet and you would have a copy. You had to be careful though as it would copy any marks made. So, if you pressed your hand too hard as you were writing you would have the shape of your hand on the copy as well. It was a jinky method but it worked for us.

We spent months sitting in a restaurant drinking coffee and writing. We met a lot of other people who also liked to sit in restaurants all night too, however, we were the only writers. Our first manuscript was over 300 pages handwritten. It was titled; The Main Street Investigators: The Case of The Computer Killers. We felt quite accomplished at that point and dove into the next “book”, The Case of The Blown Needle.

In the end, over the course of 2 years, we drafted 13 manuscripts. All of which have been lost in the passing years. Living took over and we both got full-time jobs and she got married, though we remained friends.

In 1999, my world tilted on the night my Mother died. So many plans and dreams died with her. I was like a sailboat in the middle of the ocean being tossed to and fro. I had no direction at that point in my life. I started searching online to find something that would ground me. It was then that I discovered fanfiction.

I was aware of the fanzines of the 70’s but I had no idea that this world had come to life online. My first forays were in The West Wing fandom. I found a few websites and printed the scripts at work to take home and read. How I never got caught and subsequently fired, I will never know. If they did know, it was never brought up. Luckily, I had a benevolent employer.

However, it was then that fanfiction, reading and writing, was about to become a huge part of my life. At first, I read the stories and then slowly I began to write them. Through those stories I was able to deal with my loss and amazingly I made friends, true friends. It’s been over twenty years and many of the people I met early on are still in my life.

It is these friends who helped me to return to school. It is these friends that I rely on when I need help, be it mental or physical. Fanfiction was and is more than just an escape from reality. It has been my companion, my therapist, and my escape. The people who create these stories are some of the kindest people I have ever met in my life. I am grateful to them and all the writers out there that make a difference even if they don’t know it.

My life isn’t perfect but it’s a whole lot better than it could have been. Maybe it was my Mom’s way of helping me to improve my situation. Maybe it was written in the stars.