Hello to all my lovely followers!
So a lot of you following me across social media have known me maybe around 3-4 years by now, since I'd been on Twitter before the buyout. Maybe longer if we met on Facebook. So I wanted to write a mini series on my journey as an author. Now, I have to preface with some of my lore, I cannot talk about. And that's mostly recent events, I don't think it'll affect this specific post but it will affect later ones.
Let's get started.
I will say, I did try to write off and on from about fourth grade to seventh grade. My first actual story, outside of stuff we wrote for school, was a crossover fanfic between Ratchet & Clank and Star Trek: Voyager in fourth grade. It was illustrated and written. Do I remember anything of it? Not really except I had a Lombax-sona who was an officer on the Voyager. I think she had an occular implant too. Why? I dunno, I apparently have always loved Seven of Nine. (Hi, yes, Seven could assimilate me any day). I do remember vividly standing up in the middle of class and taking the notebook to the trash can and just dropping it in there. I was brutal to myself in fourth grade. Oops.
Anyway. That's the first story I recall writing. I also wrote a sad story in 7th grade that was about the dinosaurs and it was a mama dino with her kids before the meteor landed. It's somewhere in my room. Somewhere. Before 7th grade though, my now-ex got me into Naruto. I'm 26 now, I'm still in love. I just love the old stuff more, but also I'm biased and I love my fanfic. Anyway, yes that's kinda important information.
In 6th and 7th grade, I was trying to write a Naruto fanfic. I never really could figure out the story for my OC. I had a vague idea for my OC, I remember their name was Taylor Hatake. I'm not gonna really say why her name was Taylor, but Hatake because, well, Kakashi. She had a sharingan eye, too. (She hasn't had one since 2013 though. No more sharingan because I figured that bit out). At that time, I was less familiar with the Japanese language and names, so Taylor it was. And... that was kinda all I had.
Fast forward to summer 2012. I'm about to start eighth grade. I'm on deviantArt. I'm browsing artwork because back then they actually had artwork and artists (gasp, what a concept). And I ran across this one artist who drew Sakumo. And I thought, "Oh hey, this is cool!". They had a cool art style and so I was like, "Omg I love this" in probably the most 13 year-old way, haha. I don't remember how, but we became good friends through that. Caliko, the friend, wrote an OC fanfic back on FF dot net, and I don't remember when but I asked if it was okay if I could write a fanfic with her characters, so it became a fanfic of a fanfic.
From this came the original version of my Naruto fanfiction, Into the Past. Honestly, if you remember that. I'd be so surprised. Into the Past was my first Naruto fanfiction. This is how I cut my teeth on writing. I'll never deny I've been a fanfic author, and to this day I still am. People like to act all high and mighty, that fanfiction is trash, but it's not. It's a valid tool for learning how to write. That is how many of us got started, and there is absolutely no shame in that.
Into the Past is a very important story to me, to this day. I may not have the original versions anymore, but it was what eventually led to Inarora's Excursion. But that's a later conversation. Into the Past was a story of my OC, Taylor Hatake, meeting her great-grandpa and his friends, who all belonged to that friend. I loved those characters. I did read the fanfic a bit but I knew what happened to their character, Coushander and my heart couldn't take it at the time haha. (I won't lie, I like the '-ander' part and that's why I have Lysander, but I digress). It's not that I didn't like her writing though. I loved it. I just didn't want to lose him haha.
Okay so first, I gotta say, I can't call the OC 'Taylor' anymore. It's just wrong. Their name is now 'Tsukiya' so from henceforth, I refer to Taylor as 'Tsukiya' or 'Tsuki'.
Of course, Into the Past was about Tsukiya being sent into the past by a pair of ninja who hated Kakashi or Sakumo. I think Kakashi specifically. Sakumo was alive though. Don't ask, I don't remember what it was originally. I just know I love Sakumo. Anyway, Tsuki died in the past and their ghost is how Kakashi and Sakumo got her back before she died. It's... weird. But it was a decent story if I remember correctly.
Following Into the Past, Into the Future happened. Similar concept, but the other character I absolutely adored, Dalzen, got sent into the future with Tsukiya. Tsuki, now 14 (having been 12 before), now a Chuunin... has to get Dalzen back to the past. Tsuki had a crush on him, I think, which eventually is how I developed her love-interest, Hiiragi. We did a collab scene, where Dalzen met his grandson...
Ibiki Morino.
Yes. The cool and awesome proctor for the chuunin exams. Eventually, Ibiki takes Tsukiya under his wing and eventually I introduce Hiiragi as his long lost son (which is no longer the case. I've changed things immensely since I was 14). And I gained a love and interest in Ibiki which has haunted me since then, LOL. Send help, I love Ibiki.
Anyway. Moving on. I think around 14 is when I wrote my FIRST original novel. Do I remember anything I wrote? Absolutely not. I just remember it was shifters and stuff. I think after I wrote it I kinda just pretended it didn't exist because I swear, I remember none of it except that I wrote it. I was still of course working on my Naruto fanfiction at the time, too. I probably was in the process of re-writing Into the Past and Into the Future. I swear I did 3 or 4 versions of those when I was a teenager.
Around 14 or 15, I was introduced into D&D by my dad. And my character's name? Inarora Beservera. She was a half elf sorcerer. And I fell in love with her. I wanted to write a version of Into the Past that was original, not Naruto fanfiction since, well, I can't publish fanfiction. I knew that at that age. But I didn't really know where to start. But I figured it out when I started D&D. (Shout out to the nat 20 I rolled on fireball and destroyed every single person summoning Tiamat. 10 years later, my dad's still mad).
So I got to writing. I wrote initially in my notebook, just like I had with my fanfic. Put it into the computer. Now, we have the OG Inarora's Excursion. So, I gave it to my aforementioned friend to read and... I think that was the first bit of feedback I'd actually gotten serious feedback on. I don't think she liked it as much as she liked my fanfiction. I don't remember much of the feedback anymore, though. I just have a vague memory of her disliking it, I think she was upset about something and I think it was about having similar characters (which in retrospect, fair, but I think she served the feedback in a not nice way). My mom asked around for an editor or beta reader or someone for me, and I got feedback. (The person in question was a friend of a family friend, she's also a cool person and we're still friends!)
At 15, I was not ready for that feedback. I just wasn't. I don't think I imploded, per se, but I definitely just went "I'm not ready to publish this. This book sucks." And I dropped the whole thing by the time I was 16. And just focused on Fanfiction for a while. I wasn't ready to be an author, and I'm glad I was mature enough to understand that at the time. A lot of people do not have that level of maturity to understand they are not ready for publishing.
But I won't lie, that did me so much good. Taking the time to work on other projects was great for me. I am happy I did that when I was 16. Because when I came back to it as an adult, I was about 22 when I got back to Inarora and her story and I saw where I had a great story, but I needed to fix it. I'm not going to go into much more detail about this because this post is supposed to be only part 1. I'm not here to bore everyone with the first post.
I hope this first part gives you all good insight into my rather humble beginnings as a Naruto fanfic writer of a fanfic. I plan to post the next part eventually, maybe in two weeks.
If you got this far, thank you so much for staying tuned and I hope you'll stick around.