After some consideration, I've decided to add this last author's note to my extremely old fanfiction, and add a few thoughts I've had.
First off, hello! It's very nice to meet you! Greetings from me in the future, haha!
If you're reading this, you've either read this fanfic all the way to the end, or you've subscribed a while ago. And I want to say thank you for doing so! That's really nice of you, and I appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to read this whole thing. I may not write for things like this anymore, but it still makes me kind of happy when I get the odd e-mail regarding this. I like to think of it as a very strange legacy I've left the Naruto fandom.
I wrote TWWoD when I was 15-16, mostly during my highschool Chemistry class that I just couldn't compel myself to care about. That probably explains a lot of things, doesn't it?
Back then, it was really fun writing so much and imagining what I thought was a huge and expansive story. Looking back on everything, I have to admit, I am EXTREMELY embarrassed by the entire thing. The writing's so bad, the characters are so bad, everything's bad, bad, bad! What in the world was 16 year old me thinking?! Argh, it makes me want to just somehow rip the whole thing into shreds, even though it's on the internet!
But that's the whole point.
You don't learn from writing well, you learn from writing badly, and I guess that's what this author's note is all about. That, and telling people not to listen to anyone who tells you that fanwork is not real work, and won't help you with anything. Because that is the biggest lie people seem to be telling everyone these days.
First of all, fanwork is awesome. It's a free space where you can experiment, and refine anything you want! I may be embarrassed by TWWoD, but I will never regret writing it. Writing fanfic helped me realize how much I loved writing stories, and wanted to get better. If I hadn't been writing as voraciously as I was, I never would have figured it out, and gone to college for English. I would have wound up in Marine Biology, and probably totally miserable since I'm actually really bad at science. (Remember that Chemistry class up there?)
If you're having fun doing it, don't stop! Refine your technique, use it to find your style! Make what you're doing work for you. Bend that canon until it snaps in half, and you get what you're looking for in it!
The great thing about fanwork is that you already have a whole canon to screw around with. You can twist it up, turn it upside-down, and then put it all back together so it represents YOU. It gives you an already developed framework that you can do whatever you want with, and use it to help you find the representation that you're looking for.
When I was writing TWWoD, I had just started to really struggle with my health. It was like I had a terrible monster inside that was eating me up, and wrenching control of my whole life from me. So, I gave Ryu a monster too. While I went to endless doctor's appointments, and went weeks without proper sleep thanks to all the medications they were trying, I had her meet Gaara, another person who couldn't sleep. I put my real-life struggles into my writing, and while everyone you meet will tell you not to do that, don't listen to them. Write your struggles, your fears, your past traumas. You never know who you'll reach, especially if you reach out to yourself. Never do yourself the disservice of not writing for yourself. ALWAYS write for yourself!* You're writing will grow, and so will you.
Back to what I was saying about writing badly though. Never be afraid to do anything badly. If we did everything perfectly the first time, we would never learn anything. You will learn more by screwing up twenty times then getting it right instantly. Monet painted endless paintings of lily ponds, and each one he did was consistently better and different then the last one he did. He would have never progressed if he hadn't done that first painting of a lily pond, and decided it wasn't what he was going for. But he finished it, and kept it at it.
Don't curse your badness; keep being bad, and grow! Hek, you can probably see even now from reading this that my writing has drastically changed. My style is still here, but it's grown and been refined. I got my butt kicked by my professors who showed me what I was doing badly, and how to make it less bad. My writing never would have changed if I wasn't doing it badly in the first place.
In fact, now that I'm writing and drawing cartoons full time, I love doing things badly! It helps me get all the terrible designs and story ideas out first, and get to the good stuff that both me and my readers will love. Any kind of practice is like trying to crack open a geode; you have to get through the hard shell first to see the beauty that's inside.**
And that's enough, I think. I don't want this note to become any longer than it already has, especially since I'm not even sure who might still be reading this!
Just please remember that fanwork, whether it's writing, art or roleplay, is something you can use to progress towards what you REALLY want to be creating. Use that springboard! Go, go, go!
And don't be afraid of using that springboard, and falling flat on your face. You'll learn how not to jump next time. The more times you do it, the more you figure out how to fix until you line everything up, and finally land on your feet. It also feels amazing when you realize you're sticking more landings then you thought you were too!
Thank you to everyone who's ever read my bad writing, and decided it was worth something. I hope my story helped you in some way!
If you ever want to get a hold of me, I'm on Tumblr as ryuredwingsreturn and I'm still on deviantart.
And, as always, happy reading!***
*Granted, take that idea with a small grain of caution. Write for yourself, but don't close yourself off to criticism. Take any critique you receive, look at it, and decide if what they're saying is what you need in order to get better. Don't just toss it away because you don't like what they said, REALLY look at it. Would you tell a friend what they're saying to try and help them progress? Also remember that you won't be able to please everybody, and don't use style as an excuse not to grow. Style has been the excuse of many a stunted artist.
**I took that example from the Studio Ghibli film "Whisper of the Heart." If you really want to be inspired about learning to do anything, watch it!
*** If you're really interested in getting better at writing, and not just story-wise, I can't recommend Stephen King's "On Writing" more than any other writing book. Not only is his advice really good, but his autobiography is really neat! I also recommend Neil Gaiman's "Coraline," his collaborative work with Terry Pratchett "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch," Octavia Butler's "Kindred," Sandra Cisneros' "House on Mango Street," and Emily Danforth's "The Miseducation of Cameron Post." Read these books, and not only read them for the wonderful stories, read them for the writing. Look at how these people physically place their words and how they arrange their sentences, and you will learn a few things. Promise!