drunktuesdaze:

wearecities:

im not saying everyone should tell me the first fic they wrote but they should im loving this

LET ME TELL U ALL AN EMBARRASSING THING.  The first story I ever wrote was nine years ago.  It was for THE OC and SORT OF REMIXING ANOTHER STORY but I had no concept of the idea of remixing.  I just LOVED this Seth/Ryan story so so so much that I wanted to LIVE INSIDE OF IT and I wanted MORE of it so in a strange little word document on my family’s WINDOWS ME COMPUTER, I wrote the other point of view.  SAME EVENTS, just told from Ryan’s POV instead of Seth’s.  It DID NOT DEVIATE in dialogue or scene blocking, but I worked FEVERISHLY on this weird fanfiction-of-a-fanfiction and then when I finished I felt like I had CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN and was also Mark Twain at the same time.

I wrote to the author of the original story, and told her what I had done, and somehow I thought for some reason she would be JUST AS PUMPED, like I had HELPED COMPLETE HER STORY (??????).  She was EXTREMELY GRACIOUS and THANKED ME for my efforts in a way that I will ALWAYS hope to emulate should some bumbling youth make the same mistake.  

I never posted it, because I had gleaned enough from her DIPLOMACY to know that it probably wasn’t a good idea, but the act of having written, even though it was the equivalent of tracing a cutout onto another sheet of paper, gave me the courage to try again and write ANOTHER horribly embarrassing story, and ANOTHER until I hit a place where I still write horribly embarrassing stories but they’re mine and I have self confidence about it.  

BEHAVE WITH GRACE, TACT, AND ENCOURAGEMENT TOWARDS BUMBLING NEWBIES, YA DUMMIES.  U MAY FEATURE HIGHLY IN THEIR SECRET DREAM JOURNAL TEN YEARS LATER.