Surprise and frustration often go hand in hand...
People who work in the creative arts will all tell you the same thing.
There is no such thing as a completely new idea... As a result, if you look hard enough, you can see the similarities in all the more recent stories that have been written and produced for stage, film and book mediums.
I do find it slightly ironic that we as a people choose to ignore this and just accept it as gospel. In fact in some cases, society actively encourages the creation of these same stories over and over again. Not that I'm complaining or anything. In fact it is this very phenomena that allows me to have a career as a novelist!
So you may be wondering what I going on about.
To put it simply, I've been reading. A really unusual thing for a writer to do, I know, but still there it is. You see after the titanic effort I put into NaNoWriMo 2010, and the crappy year I had before that, I sat down and put the pen away for a break. Whilst I was taking this break from my own writing, I began reflecting on the year that was and I realised something profound - at least to me.
I realised that, at some point during the year, I had stopped reading for enjoyment. Sure I still read novels, poems and articles as part of my course work but I ceased enjoying what I was reading. The worse aspect that I noticed was that I also stopped looking for new stories to inspire my own writing. It was exceptionally odd walking through a bookstore searching for appropriate christmas gifts for my more literaryamily members and feeling little but ennui washing over me.
So to counter act this downward spiral, I took inspiration from a friend of mine and looked up some fanfiction sites. Now, before I go any further, I have to address a small issue. For the longest time I thought fan-fiction to be a cop out. The reason I thought this is quite simply that the world, characters and situations are already established by the original author, so therefore it is much easier to take brief forays into these established worlds. However, what I found, was quite the opposite, in that I found a large number of well thought out pieces. Now admittedly, there were plenty of woeful pieces and some that I would barely consider as legible english. But those few diamonds in the rough has got me addicted almost to the point of wanting to try my hand at it.
However, before I do, I have to wonder... Is fanfiction a legitimate means to get your professional name established? As far as I'm aware, there has been very fanfiction writers who've successfully made the transition into professional writers, and all of those who have didn't publish under their online pseudonym.
I'm curious to get others opinions, and while I wait I think I'll sit down to the next entry on my preferred fanfiction site and see if it's sand or a diamond.