My experience with writing/reading fanfic started over a decade ago with the X-Files. One day, while looking for spoilers for the show, I found a website with stories and devoured them all. Back then, I only had 'net access at work, so I would print out stories to take home and read. And that, naturally, led to my husband asking what the heck I was reading. I tried to get him to read some of them, but he wasn't all that interested. Instead, he asked me why I didn't write something instead. After a lot of "oh, I could never write something anyone would want to read", he finally convinced me that I really ought to at least try it.
It was fun and amazing, once I got started. I was blown away to be getting emails from people who had read a story of mine. For about six months, the only person who knew I was writing was Mark. And then, at the family Christmas party, right after I had won a Spooky (the XF equivalent of a Kerth), Mark opened up his mouth and blabbed (he said it was boasting, but in my mind it was blabbing) to everyone present that I was writing stories about Mulder and Scully.
I wanted to die! It seemed so stupid to be writing stories about a television show and - even worse - winning an award for it. My family's reactions ranged from confusion to amusement to, in the case of my brothers and one uncle, glee that they now had years of material to tease me about incessantly. My mom, being a supportive parent, asked to read my stories (and so did one of my sisters).
A couple of years later I stopped writing abruptly (after real life overwhelmed me). It was years later when I saw the second season of LnC and remembered how much I had once adored the show. I figured there had to have been fan fiction for it, so I went looking and found the boards. After chanting some self-affirmations and a lot of deep breathing, I wrote one story. I didn't tell anyone that I was writing again.
Shortly after I posted that first story, my mom mentioned how much she had once enjoyed my stories and why didn't I write anymore? I confessed to her that I was, sorta, writing again. Eventually I told my younger sister too, but no one else knows. And I don't want them to know.
I worry that others think it's nerdy and obsessive to be writing about a show that went off the air so long ago. I have a life and other interests. There's no easy way to explain to an outsider the inexpressible joy to be found in telling a story - and in having others read that story who are generous enough to share with me what they thought.
I'm here because it's rewarding to meet and talk to people from all over the world, people who share a kind of secret language with me, who I can be an obsessive nerd around and they don't judge me for it.
