atlinmerrick:

Famous People Who Ficced
Before We Did

If
you’re still feeling shy about writing fic, if you’re feeling that
that’s now how you’ll grow as a writer or publish, know that some pretty
well-known names wrote fan fiction—and then went on to write original work, work that
generated its own fandoms.

Hugo-award
winner Lois McMaster Bujold, author of stories like The Mountains of Mourning, Paladin
of Souls, and Cryoburn, wrote Star
Trek fan fic as a young girl. Andy Weir, writer of The Martian, the book from which the movie was made, wrote Ready Player One fan fic. Mark Gatiss, co-creator
of Sherlock, has been writing Doctor Who stories for decades.

There’s
more. R. J. Anderson, best-selling author of young adult fiction and writer of
the novels Knife, Arrow, and Swift, started out with fan fiction and says getting online,
sharing her stories with other readers, and meeting other writers, encouraged her
and improved her skills.

Neil
Gaiman, author of Neverwhere, Stardust, and American Gods, used to write fic, saying he earned a Hugo “for
a story that ripped off Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and H. P.
Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos.”

Gaiman
goes on to say that all writing helps
you hone your writing skills. “I think you get better as a writer by
writing, and whether that means that you’re writing a singularly deep and
moving novel about the pain or pleasure of modern existence or you’re writing
Smeagol-Gollum slash you’re still putting one damn word after another and
learning as a writer.”

Then there are fans who took their geek passions and turned
them in to award-winning programming. Irish filmmaker Emer Reynolds devoured
sci-fi growing up, her shelves full of Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock and
H.G. Wells. In this last year Reynolds released to world-wide and award-winning
acclaim the feature length science documentary The Farthest.

Writer Chris Charter couldn’t get enough of The Twilight Zone, loving it so much he
kept fiddling with the format—leaving failed TV shows in his wake—until he went
on to create The X-Files, a programme
so popular in the early 90s that people avoided making Friday night plans—me
among them!

These examples are just the tip of the fic and creativity
iceberg and the take home
message is simply this:

Just
damn well write the stories you want to write. Create the art you want to
create. Love the fandom you love.

It’s
that love and passion and practice that can take you so very, very far.

Read more on writing and fic and all the things in this week’s Spark newsletter—subscribe too, and write for us!