Reading, Writing and Unreality
So, once again, I’m tempted to write in another fandom. Over the years I’ve written fanfic for “Supernatural”, “House MD”, “Swiss Army Man” and on, a challenge, for “Dragnet”. It will take a long time to get the image of a naked Joe Friday out of my mind. Be careful of the writing challenges you accept.
Over the years, fanfic has proven the easiest thing to write. There are few expectations, no deadlines, no exposure to the wider world. The fandom applauds my stories and compliments my talent. It’s like giving candy to a baby. I’m a very good writer and I write easily in the voice of others. After all, I’ve been a playwright/monologuist for years.
I wrote my first Jeeves/Wooster fic, “Hard Boiled Eggs” and I’ve been on a reading binge for at least a week. A large part of the latter activity is that Mom's doing badly and I need to hide from that and from the state of the world in general. So I plunge into the world of fanfiction, Archive of Our Own, for hours on end.
But is all of my time to be taken up writing fanfic? I’m not young anymore. I should be turning my thoughts to a memoir, and essays. I have many ideas. I’ve written about mental illness. Right now I’m writing a piece about going insane. Going insane is definitely one of my strongest skill sets. I’m considering writing about handling a gun while I was in Memphis and how I really wanted to buy it. Even though I’m pro-gun control and a New Yorker to boot. I should finish a long piece I’ve been writing about my father’s death. Or the time a SWAT team showed up on my doorstep and took me to the psych ward. (Turns out it was a false alarm-someone called in to 911 deliberately. I never found out who it was.) I managed to write about being deported from England, in “A Basket Full of Cats”. Here
I should finish the enormous historical fantasy novel "The Princess and The Peeved" that I’ve worked on in spurts since 2009. I've finished reading Part 1 to my writing group. They shower me with applause and compliments. I should promote the anthology of my plays, “Cervix With A Smile”, that Exit Press published over a year ago. I should try to perform more than twice a year.
Part of me just wants to write about the unexpected consequences of when Bertie convinces Jeeves to be Fred Astaire to Bertie’s Ginger Rogers.
If I was younger I wouldn’t be quite so conflicted. Oh, wait, I’m always so conflicted.