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The truth is, many a wonderfully published writer begins and has begun in fan fiction, a quirky subculture that allows you to write about existing characters and worlds while making the stories your own. I look at it as a stepping stone toward truly writing novels. You have the characters laid out for you, maybe the setting—unless you write an alternate universe fan fiction, in which case you push the boundaries and make the story even more your own. For me, I began writing pretty close to the world of the show I loved, but quickly began going farther and farther afield into my own characters and plots. That was the “magical doorway” for me—the moment when I knew that I was ready to spread my wings and for the first time write novels of my own. Starting in fanfiction gave me the confidence that, indeed, I could conjure 75,000-100,000 words and tell a coherent, multi-faceted story.

So, after several years of writing maybe a million words that I would never share with publishers, I made the leap out on my own. I was going to be a novelist! It was what I think of as my first true “construction job”, ground up, I had to create a universe, characters, a plot. All of it had to be mine. In short, I leapt through that “magical window” and discovered something amazing—everything I’d written until that moment in 2003 had only been part of a puzzle. None of it had fully satisfied.

Screenplays were too barebones for my writing needs—I wanted to describe the characters, the setting, gestures. I needed to delve into the inner lives of the people I was writing about. And, of course, fan fiction—for as much fun as it was and as much as I learned—wasn’t truly my own. For the first time, I experienced the daunting, inspiring, and sometimes intoxicating high of writing a novel.

A year and a half later, I finally had a polished manuscript that I felt was strong enough to send to publishers. But the journey had only just begun…