ALL THE FEELS

So with all my extra jittery energy yesterday morning, I did, in fact, spend the wee hours between 2 am and 6 am working up a one-week proposal for writing SF/F for teens. It's called MORE THAN THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE: Writing SF/F and, despite the fact that I was composing it completely on raw nerves, apparently it was exactly what the coordinator of the Loft's teen classes was looking for and she's going to put me on the schedule. I told her when she emailed me with the news, that I'd also really love to propose a couple of other classes, including on one writing fanfic.

So now I've been thinking about what I might like to do with a class on fanfic. My first question to you, the fanfic writer, is this: when you were 15, would you have been more interested in ALL THE FEELS: FanFic 101 or NO MORE KUDOS: Making the Switch from FanFic to Original Fiction? I think that either would fly, so don't try to think in terms of which is more "legit" to teach.

I've been asking people for advice on FB and Twitter, but it occurs to me that LJ is probably the best platform in so many ways. A lot of fic writers live here, after all.

At any rate it's probably only going to be a one-week class, so that's only five days of teaching (I might try two weeks, but...). Anyway, I have a couple of *for sure* topics to cover: how to take critique from strangers/find beta readers, the power of the psuedonym, and some of the basics of writing. Here's the thing, my biggest problem is that I came into fanfic both as a reader and writer AFTER I wrote and sold my first professional novel. That makes my perspective wonky. I knew how to write (at least the basics) and had already struggled with the craft of writing in a way that stressed/fostered the skills especially needed for original fiction. I'd love to know if you've seen any trends/problems that are very specific to having learned to write in someone else's world with characters pre-formed. I can imagine some, have read a few, but I suspect that some of my perspective is... well, too outsider-y, you know? That I come with the wrong set of expectations when I read fic. Because, as my friend naomikritzer said in the comment thread on FB, fanfic is a large part play (and the big draw for me, honestly,) and so it should be judged by different standards perhaps.

Thoughts? Counterpoints? Arguments? Ideas?

In other news, I've been failing NaNoWriMo, somewhat. I've been writing a lot, but I've clearly been playing the game wrong. Yesterday, my word count only went up by 16 words. The problem? I'd done a massive amount of revision and there's no way to record that in the competitive writing that is NaNo. But, I've decided to be a rebel. I'm going to actually just try to have something sellable at the end of the month, and worry less about writing 2,000 words a day on it.

Ha!

Also, I'm going to have to take some time to update you all on my continuing saga of the fish obsession. Loki's tank? It's totally posion! I tried putting a 12 cent feeder fish in it and it was dead within four hours!! Creepy! I'm going to have to stip that tank to the bone and try to restart. The other tank, the thirty gallon one I tried to give a vague sort of Japanese garden look to is doing well. I have two white mountain minnows in there conditioning it and they seem happy as... well, not clams, but some other appropriately happy fish-type thing. My plan with that tank is to have, as Mason calls it, a "bait ball" of minnows. The tank could hold as many as seventeen, so I'm going to slowly built toward that.

Okay, that's all the news for now. Must run. Have a lot of outside work I need to get done!