I haven’t updated in a while, I get that. I’m not about to make any promises here about increasing my blogging output, but I thought I’d come here and tell you all a thing.

I have written a lot over the past three years

I’ve written almost a million words of fiction in the past 3 years. It wasn’t commercial fiction, it was and is fanfic/fanfiction.

A couple of things led to this, in no particular order…

1. Becoming a fan of Supernatural in 2015
2. Pulling out of National Novel Writing Month in 2014
3. My grandmother dying in 2014
4. Becoming part of Supernatural fandom culture in 2015
5. Stress

Fanfic writing, an activity predominantly occupied by people society would identify as female (while individual fanfic writers may not), is something I’ve previously described to myself as junk food writing.

This I’ve come to realise as I adjust to a major life change this year (I started at a new company this year, first switch in almost 6 years), is an unfair assessment.

Writing fanfic is more like the writing equivalent of stew. It’s filling and warming, making you feel good on those days that you need something to help you feel good.

And the feedback you get for posting fanfic is mostly like really well made suet based dumplings. I say mostly, because there are still terrible dumplings (commenters) out there.

But I’m not just writing fanfic

February saw me reach just over 10,000 words on an original novel. I’m hoping to have a complete first draft by the end of the year.

But I don’t think I would be writing it now if I hadn’t had the reassurance of my regular fanfic readers (yes, I have fans) who have really enjoyed what I’ve written over the past few years, and who have confirmed that my writing in general is enjoyable to read. Writing can also be a really lonely process, but fanfic writing is in this nice place where it’s as lonely as you make it. So I’m using some occasional fanfic writing to reassure me that I do definitely have skill and ability as a fiction writer.

Oh, and I’m not writing the next 50 Shades that is definitely not my kind of thing when it comes to something I’m writing as commercial fiction.

What’s the novel about?

It’s a sort of urban fantasy, southern Gothic thing set in Cornwall. I don’t want to get into specifics here as of yet.

I will also have to extensively rewrite the first few chapters after switching from third person limited to first person. Joy.

Will you hit a million words of fanfic this year?

Quite possibly.