Why Psych?

I keep coming back to writing fan fiction for the TV show Psych...  Why?  Good question!   Basically, it comes down to what is familiar and enjoyable.   Like a favorite book or comfort food, Psych makes me feel good.  I settle into the characters and the story and it just flows.  I don't think of it as work because the characters just speak to me.  Not literally, of course.   That would be crazy...  (Shut up Shawn, I am not!)

So yeah - I love the show, but there are a lot of shows that I love: Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Doctor Who...   Why am I not writing fan fiction for those?  Again, good question!  Maybe I will someday, but as much as I love these other shows, they don't get into my head the same way that Shawn and Gus and Juliet and the rest do.  Something about those characters resonates with me on a level that makes me want to write stories about them.

And then there's psychfic.com.  The site makes it so easy to put my stories out there for a very appreciative audience.  I get a count of how many people have read my story as I post each chapter.  I get reviews that are very encouraging and positive.  (Not as many as I would like, but I do get them.)  Basically, it lets me get my writing out there to a specific audience who seem to really like what I do.

Psych has really helped me grow as a writer, letting me focus on the craft of writing good, fun dialogue.  I can focus on plot and character interactions with people that are already well-established.  It's helped me in my own writing to make characters that are believable and enjoyable to read.  I look back at my first novel and I realize that I could have done SO much better, but I've found that is true of all authors.  You never stop learning and growing in this profession (or in my case, hobby).  When I retire from my "real" job, I know that I will be spending a lot of time writing and I can look back on my body of work and learn from what I'm doing now.

So what's next?  Well, I'm about halfway through my latest Psych episode, On the Turning Away.  After that, I'll be gearing up for NaNoWriMo and my goal is to get a huge jump on my newest novel, Dream Flyer.  I've made decent progress so far, but I really want to focus on the story and get it done!  I'm planning to send it out to publishers and seeing what happens.  After that, I'm planning to get the last book in the Undead War trilogy completed - Khol's story needs an ending!   So, big things planned, but I am excited.

I'll keep you posted!

Writing has been tough lately.  It's something I love to do but there are so many distractions and responsibilities that it is really hard to make myself sit down and commit to the process.  With that in mind, I'm going to take the advice of the late Ray Bradbury: write every day.

Now I know there's a lot more good advice floating around out there but that's just another distraction for me.  Every minute I spend reading or listening to advice from others about how to write is a minute I could actually be writing.  At the moment, I've got two novels in progress and another "episode" in my fan-fiction series for the TV show Psych.

I can't complain: I've got two completed novels and a novel's worth of fan fiction.  I've also got two "screenplays" that I wrote for work: a pair of fun training videos - one done as The Twilight Zone and one as Mission: Impossible.  I've been asked to do a third one and the concept I keep coming back to is the Wizard of Oz.  So yeah...  Another project to work on!

So I am going to make it my goal to actually do what Bradbury suggests.  Writing SOMETHING every day: a blog post, a new chapter in one of my novels or fan fiction, or maybe even something for an entirely new or different project.  I know that if I ever want to make this more than just a hobby, I have to do it.  Hmmm...  November is coming up.  Maybe it's time to do National Novel Writing Month.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Take the month of November and really go crazy on writing?  We will see.