To all my fellow fanfic writers out there…I need help, advice, or just empathy from someone who’s been in the situation I’m currently in! :cry:

Last year, roughly February 2006, I was hugely inspired to write a fanfic. I knew exactly the twists and turns I was going to take a certain character on. So I wrote the first couple of chapters, got very excited about them, and looked for a beta-reader within that fandom.

We had a very nice correspondence, and when she returned the beta-ed chapters, I got excited all over again to get my opus out on FF.net…you know how it is! But as it was my first time to write a chaptered fic, I held off a little bit, wanting to get the rest of the story out first. That was roughly May 2006.

Now let me just say that this was a story I had plotted in my head. I knew exactly what the character was gonna go through, exactly how many chapters it was gonna be, exactly how it was gonna end. But sometime between writing the third chapter, all the stuff I thought of, the soul-searching I was gonna put the character through…everything suddenly so…deflated. It wasn’t as inspired, and I felt that my writing didn’t sing the way it did when I blazed through the beginning of the fic. And worst of all, the character didn’t seem in-character at all! My beta’s e-mails were still encouraging, giving me advice that I kept in mind as I tried to resurrect the old inspiration.

But somewhere along all that, school got in the way(*cringes* please tell me that’s a perfectly valid excuse!), as did other fandoms, and the writing began to feel like work, which is the kiss of death for me. So I stopped writing for a bit, hoping to get a different point of view when I read my own words again. Amidst my writer’s block, I posted the fic on FF.net, thinking that reviews might get my mind wired up all over again, bring the inspiration back. They did come, some of the best reviews I’ve ever gotten as a fanfic author. But in a way, I also felt bad, knowing I’d pulled them into something that I wasn’t sure I would be able to deliver fully. :(

Fast forward to now…I’ve written one-shots on a whim hopped, fandoms a lot,am toying with a few story ideas here and there…but I still have the chaptered story hanging, have not corresponded with my beta reader in a LONG time(I am particularly ashamed of this). No matter how much I toy with it, the next chapters, fully refuses to satisfy me. Anyway, I’m caught in a dilemma:
1)Finish the damn chapter already, despite my misgivings, and FINISH THE STORY, ‘cos anyway, I know where I’m going with the rest
2} Don’t push it. Wait for something else to inspire me, wait until I jump back into that fandom again.

That’s not to say that I haven’t had flashes of inspiration here and there. But, once I get started on them, I lose steam halfway through, and begin to think “Is this right? Should I really veer from what I first had in mind?” or, on the other side of the spectrum “Crap, this is the same thing that got me stalled, I should really go with my new idea.” I’m never satisfied with what I’ve written because my mind keeps changing. :blink: And I don’t know how to contact my beta reader again, after I’ve abandoned her and the story for almost a year---I’m so embarrassed for disappearing on her like that!.
However, I really really want to finish this story! :cry:

Well, this is becoming a very long post! And I know…I’m in the same situation as a heck lot of other writers on FF.net. I am not alone…I’ve seen enough discontinued stories to know that.

But I really really really do want to finish what I’ve started, and I’m wondering if any fellow fanfic writers here have found themselves in the same bind…and can give me advice on how to get over this evil evil thing known as writer’s block!

I'm not much of an authority on writing as my mediocre scribblings always feel pushed, cheesy, unengrossing, fill-in-the-blank. But the one piece of advice I've always received from published authors (my oldest brother included) is to never create a roadmap for a story, and it's a piece of advice I cherish very much.

Whenever I made a detailed plan of what a story or fanfic was going to be, 20 page outlines and timelines of exactly what events should happen in what chapters, the tale would fall apart 50 pages in. Not that it didn't make sense anymore or that there were plotholes, it just didn't breathe.

The best way to do a story is to begin with an idea and a few key characters. Then, just write. I don't know if you've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but J.R.R. Tolkein didn't plan to include Saruman originally and wrote a lot of the beginning on a whim. Star Wars Episode IV didn't have Yoda at first. I've written a number of fanfictions myself, and my best example would be from a fanfic I wrote about The Office. But sticking within the realm of FFVII, I started off my longest Cleris fic, In the Absense of My Flower Girl, with one general idea of how it would go. I abandoned that idea by the end of the first page, and just wrote the scene without any notion of how it should be. It produced one of my favorite scenes in the fic, and completely remade the story into something much better than I had initially imagined.

Here's my point: us writers have to humble. Sometimes, we think we have a really killer idea when we open up a word document for a new story or fic. But to plan everything out like that often creates a story that has much flavor as a piece of cardboard. In short, I think your problem is that you're not letting the writing flow freely enough. I look at writing as weaving a tapestry; you can't be completely sure what the pattern is until it's finished and you take a step back. Let your words take their own path, and that infuriating prison of writer's block slips away.

I just write off the top of my head with a theme in mind but if there is no inspiration or even a small idea for that "theme" then writer's block strikes. Also if I get bored of that theme I tend to not work on that story any more. So I know what's it's like.

(Big 600th Post! :dance: )