A long time reader, I recently celebrated the one year anniversary of beginning my first fanfiction (FF) story. I started writing Vindicating a Man of Consequence (VMC) on June 16, 2018. It was very personal to me as I wanted to depict people with autism, like one of my sons, in a more positive light and thought it would be interesting to deal with such challenges through a highly personal first person look inside Darcy's mind through the lens of autism before anyone had a name or explanation for such a condition. I really enjoyed re-purposing parts of Pride and Prejudice (P&P) in it to apply to different situations. It has a lot of twists and turns in it as I didn't dictate the plot to my characters but instead let them decide how things would go and let them surprise me (which I have since determined is a winning approach for me as it always seems to turn out better than what I tentatively had planned). VMC turned into a full length novel and then some. By writing a short chapter or more daily I was able to complete it in just over three months (though it ended up a lot longer than I anticipated). The encouragement of my kind readers helped motivate me to keep it up and made me feel that by completing it I had finally earned the right to a proper pen name (Laina Lee is not my real name). I thought then that I would take a break from writing and revise VMC, but I found myself itching to write a new story again (it is addictive) and did.

Since that time the stories just kept coming, though not necessarily on what would be considered the most popular topics. Although I enjoy reading our dear couple (ODC) romances, there are so many of them that I have really been more captivated by the other characters. So while you see some people writing stories with the idea that they will later publish them and make money on them, that really isn't my motivation. What I like doing is exploring the characters in depth.

I started the first draft of A Bride for Bennet (B4B) the next day after finishing VMC (although I posted some outtakes and add-ins of VMC after that, the one from Charlotte's POV is my personal favorite) and posted the first chapter one day after that. I wanted to answer the questions I had about how Mr. and Mrs. Bennet ever ended up together and use some humor in my writing. B4B is personal to me as Jane Gardiner (who is really a "Lydia" type) is based loosely on my daughter, but I found myself relating to each of the characters. Amazingly, I ended up finishing B4B in eighteen days (including the last seven chapters in two days). The revision which I am currently working on is taking considerably longer, but faster isn't always better and I am expanding the story and fleshing out a lot of things that ended up being summary as I barreled head long into the ending.

Tired of Waiting for You (TWY), a Persuasion project was the next story I started. I completely understand why Anne Elliot in TWY gets frustrated that P&P gets all the traction when her Frederick Wentworth from Persuasion is worth two of Darcy. I wanted to depict an Anne who could take control of her own life and assert herself, certainly a difficult task in her era and situation, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about women living aboard ships. TWY is still a work in progress; the name has turned out to be rather apt as it is still uncompleted, though I hope to take it off the back burner soon. Other projects keep distracting me, not because I don't love this story but because I found myself rather out of my depth when it comes to writing realistically about life aboard a Navy ship in the age of sail, which means research and while I enjoy research I enjoy writing and posting more (no one reviews your research and tells you positive things about it, usually not even when it ends up in a chapter).

I had barely started TWY when George Wickham demanded my attention, resulting in Wickham Wins (WW). He, being rather selfish, demanded to jump ahead of Anne so that readers would understand why he really wanted to revenge himself against Darcy and also demanded his own chance at a HEA. I had no idea when I started writing Wickham's story that Darcy had been so awful to George during their childhoods or that George started out life as a good guy. While I was writing WW, some of the characters from VMC also demanded their own say (so I updated that story with outtakes from their POVs). I finished WW with a few bumps along the way, including having to majorly re-write a chapter (my reviewers were right about that). I will be writing a sequel to WW called Wickham's Wish, but before that I need to finish up my other projects and work on revising.

Then Fanny Gardiner insisted she wasn't the ditz everyone always depicts her as, and that she has a very good reason for appearing that way, so I began writing Trapped. I thought this would be a fairly short story; boy was I wrong! This is my darkest work and there were certainly times when I wasn't liking either Mr. or Mrs. Bennet. Like my other stories, I only had a very vague plan and the characters quickly ripped it to shreds (except on who Jane would meet in London), but the good thing about writing like that is that I am free to explore and it keeps my stories from being predictable. It was really fun in this project to try to write it from shifting first person points of views, which as a limiting constraint made me write the story differently than I would have if writing it in 3rd person. I think this approach provided a kind of intimacy and intensity that made this story sing (though of course I don't really know what readers thought of that). At some point Trapped will be getting a revision but I am keeping this format.

During Trapped a couple of other projects intervened (when Trapped was already putting off TWY): the tiny Master of Pemberley, Servant of God (thank goodness it was willing to stay as two little chapters) and The Modern Mother's Day Survival Guide (MMD) (which I thought would only be two or three chapters long, but Mary wanted to get her own chance at happiness with the Colonel). The first story was intended for Easter and the second for Mother's Day.

MMD is a woman-centric piece focused on the ladies of Pride and Prejudice some years after the events in the novel and is the first story I have written in what is intended to be the present. At some point in my life I, or other women in my life, have been in most of the situations depicted (I've had my mother die, I've dealt with a challenging mother-in-law, I've dealt with knowing that it is too late to have other children, etc.). The story really explores all aspects of motherhood and what is a good mother and what is a bad mother. It was fun to have a Richard-Mary romance, but at its heart this story is not about them (thought they are a nice distraction). I did not expect neglected children to play such a big role in the final 1/3 of this story, but I guess I should not have been that surprised as the situation with abused and neglected children is very close to my heart as we adopted our daughter out of foster care as a teen and it was she who had her possessions sold by her mother to pay for drugs.

I think the world at large mostly does not understand what some kids have to go through, or how hard it is for them to resolve their issues even after they get out of being in a bad home. Kids always love their parents even if their parents are horrible to them and there is a tremendous loss associated with ending up living with someone else, be it a foster family or a relative placement. While in MMD the children are fortunate enough to end up with a relative placement, the situation for especially teenagers who end up in foster care can be very dire. If they end up aging out many end up alone at 18 and are much less well prepared to deal with living on their own than other newly minted adults. Imagine being 18 and having no parents or anyone else to turn to for help. The statistics are really horrible on how many end up in prison, homeless, drug addicted, pregnant and dead. But the challenge of raising these children to be independent adults is pretty extreme, too.

You would think all this writing would be exhausting, but it is actually energizing. I love doing research and finding new things that I can incorporate into my stories. Additionally, living in these other worlds for a while helps me cope with the stress of my real life. After my first couple of projects, I decided to not commit to a daily posting schedule, although I try to do some writing or research daily. When I have finished a story I generally can't seem to stop myself from working on something else just a day or two later (I don't know what else to do with myself which is either a blessing or a curse).

I've been asked how I have the time to do all this writing and research when I have a full time job, four children (three in school and one that just graduated, the oldest with special needs) and a husband who all need my time. My answer can be found by analogy to an impassioned speech in the movie, Any Given Sunday, as given by the coach played by Al Pacino. In trying to inspire his players to win, he tells them that the collective inches needed for victory are all around them and they need to fight for that inch. I've decided that if I want to get anywhere with writing, I can't wait for anyone to give me the time to do it. Instead, I need to put together minutes here and there (with hopefully a couple of hours thrown in, too) to write or research daily to achieve the victory of completing each story. Sometimes that means if I wake up early that I get up and write on the computer instead of trying to fall back asleep again. Sometimes it means that I grab a few minutes while my kids are doing their chores and dinner is in the oven. Sometimes it means that when I am in a waiting room that I write a few minutes on my phone. Sometimes it means that I go to the gym, get on a stationary bike there and as I peddle I research or write on my Kindle. Sometimes it means that after a full day of work, errands, taking kids to appointments, helping kids with homework and studying for their tests that I haven't had a chance to write at all until everyone but my husband is in bed, so I take a few minutes then just so that I've gotten something done. It is well worth it and at the end of the day writing is much more satisfying than just spending that time watching T.V., playing an electronic game, or surfing the internet because I've done something that matters to me (of course I also take some time in there to read what other FF writers are posting and to comment and encourage them, too). That doesn't mean I don't watch T.V. or play games; I do, but I am a lot more deliberate in when I do these things rather than just using them as filler-time.

By the way, I don't believe in writer's block. Instead I think there is something called writer's fear, where you have an idea but have a ton of self-doubt about whether it is good enough. Although I have definitely had times where I didn't know what to write next, that isn't a block but an opportunity to take the story in a new and hopefully unexpected direction. In this situation, generally I just need to give myself a little time to think and then something would occur to me, or I just needed to let the characters go on from wherever they were at and they (yes I know it is my mind too, but it requires getting into their minds) would have the solution. I get great thinking done while walking the dog, showering, falling asleep at night, doing chores that don't require much thought. Will what I write down always be the best thing? Not necessarily, but so what, you write it and go from there. If it truly doesn't work, that's what a revision is for.

I've also been asked what my writing plans are for the future. Right now they include finishing up my revision of B4B, finishing TWY, radically revising Modern Mother's Day into a non-Pride and Prejudice novella and entering it in some contests (mostly just for fun and because my husband wants me to try this), revising VMC and publishing it (though whether it may be in three parts or will stay in one is still to be determined), taking up a couple of ideas I have jotted down to begin new stories, writing the sequel to WW, etc. It could take me years to get through all of my plans and I am sure in the meantime that other ideas will intrude. However, I am going to try my best to be disciplined and not begin writing anything new until I have finished my WIPs and revised what I have already written, but we will see . . . . (while writing my update to this profile another idea just occurred to me which I had to jot down for a Lady Catherine centered variation).

You may notice in my stories that there are references to Bible verses and Christian themes (though how much of this there may be in various stories varies by a lot). I am a Christian and my faith informs my outlook on the world and the characters I am borrowing. I think writers who are Christians have a choice to make. At one extreme they may choose to completely omit any reference to God from their works in hopes of appealing to as broad an audience as possible, at the other extreme they may use stories as a way to preach to people (putting a message above the story). I don't want to be in either camp. Therefore, what I put in is what makes sense to me from what the story is and who the characters are as products of their time. So in VMC, I imagined Darcy as a person of faith whose perspective would inform him, but you don't see something similar in most of the other characters. B4B does not have much of a Christian perspective at all (except a little criticism of the aunt's hypocrisy). In TWY, while I have referenced Bible verses, the character that used them, Frederick Wentworth, is not necessarily a person of faith and its use impacted him perhaps in a different way than Ecclesiastes would impact someone else; whether other Bible references make it into the story is still to be determined. In WW, there is much more of a Christian perspective being raised simply due to the nature of the story-line itself as I'm not going to write something about Wickham's chance at redemption through supernatural intervention and then omit all references to God and focus on whether Wickham can learn to be a good person or not. Master of Pemberley, Servant of God is pretty much all Christian perspective, but it was written for Easter after all. Trapped has very little Christianity in it, but there are redemptive themes in the end (God is all about second chances after all).

I feel very blessed by FF. I love that this community is filled with both readers and writers who support one another. I have really enjoyed getting to know both people who review my stories and some writers that I review who have been great mentors when I asked questions of them (as I want to try publishing at some point). For anyone who messages me or reviews who is signed in, you can expect to hear from me.

I treasure having the opportunity to both read other people's stories and having the freedom to try writing ones myself with the structure provided by an existing story. FF has allowed me to be a fiction writer, something I always wanted to be, but never felt like I could really follow through on (I do profession writing in a specialized field). But now here I am in my mid-forties living out my dream and it has been amazing, even if I never make a dime on it.

If you write and post on FF (or plan to), I hope I have had (or will have) a chance to read something you have written. If you haven't written anything, don't be afraid to start! We want to support you and see what you can do!

Laina Lee