. . . they received the pep talk email from Mercedes Lackey?
I did! (If you aren’t doing NaNoWriMo, I’m pretty sure you can find the pep talks on the NaNo website, and hers could be fun to skim through.)
*ETA* Okay, stopped being lazy (!) and found the link to Mercedes Lackey’s pep talk, so you can go straight there without hunting for it.
MMADfan's Blog & Fanfic Site 
lol, I’m glad you are having a good time with NaNoWriMo, and I have to say I’m loving the advise Mercedes is giving! write fanfiction lol, my thoughts exactly! I hope you are having fun and writing lots of words daily for your novel, best of luck!!
Sam
Hi, Sam!
If I were writing fanfic for NaNo, it would be so much faster! But this is a nice challenge. 🙂 But I do think it’s great advice of hers for writers to begin with fanfic if they haven’t got an idea for something of their own.
I had to smile, though — and I loved the acknowledgment that a lot of writers of some stature (in their genre, anyway) wrote fanfic (and some still do!), and that it’s a good way to get the writing bug, as well as to learn a little something about how to put a story or dialogue together.
Even though I still really like RaM, there are huge swaths that I would mercilessly edit down — almost all of it “introspective” scenes. But that’s also one of the pitfalls of writing serialized fiction (of any sort) as you write it: you discover only later what you should have cut out (or put in a different place), or what you should have included earlier and ended up having to shoe-horn in. And I had outlined RaM really early in my writing, but that only helped with the overall structure, not for the occasionally over-long internal musings of some of the characters.
Ah, well! It’s still a fun read — I go back every now and then to check some detail or description or whatever, and end up reading several chapters. One of my favorite sections is still the Gamp house party section.
I have way too much to do today to get much writing done until this evening, but I hope I can keep up with the pace. I’m managed to keep up with the target total number of words, but it can be painful! I figure I can go back to it in December and begin cutting and moving stuff around and adding scenes, or whatever.
I think that every writer started with fanfiction, because we write about the things we know, the people we’ve met, even if we don’t realise it we are always basin characters in people from our own lives, so that’s a bit like fanfiction lol. Well maybe not everyone writes like this but in my experience there’s always something or someone influencing our writing in someway.
I always thought that we tend to be to hard on ourselves, I can honestly say I wouldn’t edit much of RaM, is perfect as it is!! I should know I’m junior editor in a printing house, of course I work with latin and greek translations and in spanish mostly but still I know a thing or two lol, so you leave the RaM universe alone!! lol.
I’m truly happy that you are doing NaNo, you’ve got a real talent for writing and, as much as I love your fanfics, it’s good that you are writing something original, something that’s yours. Of course you could always write Siofre or Malcolm or Gertrude in one of your originals lol, they are yours. I would be a happy woman!!
I hope you get the time, energy and inspiration to write all the words you need! Best of luck with your novel! I hope to see you amongst the winners!
Sam
I’ve written bits and pieces of original fic before, and a couple incomplete short stories, but I’ve never done anything with them. That’s one reason I decided to do NaNo this year (under my real name, sort of, not my fanfic author i.d.): it’s become the “easy” and comfortable thing for me to write fanfic, and that comfort with fanfic has been keeping me from biting the bullet and writing something original.
Time to step out of that comfort zone!
It takes alot of courage and strength to do that, so you are very brave! and I truly admire you for doing it, not everyone can step out of the comfort zone, I know I have a hard time just with thinking about it lol. But you know NaNo is only the first step, once you have a novel or just a draft ready you can truly step out and send it to people, publishers and the like, you might be the next Rowling! you never know. Have fun and don’t be afraid, you might think something is not good enough but other people wont, as I said we are our worst and hardest critics.
Sam
Thanks very much for the supportive comment! I need the pep talk!
lol, well I have to say I’m very good at it, that’s part of my job! I’m always pep talking (lol) our authors, when I’m not making coffee runs or getting copies! the joys of being the youngest junior editor, I get all the fancy jobs lol.
So whenever you feel like you need one just let me know, or I might just start sending you the emails I send my clients lol. Nah! I wouldn’t do that, you get your own special pep talk lol, just have fun, lots and lots of fun!