What the Hell Am I Doing Writing West Wing Fanfiction?

It has nothing to do with politics, like, absolutely nothing.

First of all, don't worry, I'm not going to make you read any West Wing fanfiction. Even if I was going to post any species of fiction, I'd make you pay for it. But seriously, why am I writing it at all? What's the point? What's your damage, Heather? 

My writing this post is equal parts me trying to explain it to myself while making some fun, stupid content about what it's like to be a writer who is struggling to write. My ultimate goal is to be a person who gets paid to write fiction, but as a functioning adult who likes being able to pay her bills, this is not what's happening right now. But it doesn't mean I'm not writing fiction for free! 

But my beef (with myself) is that rather than dive into a wholly original project -- of which I have many at the moment -- I turn to characters who aren't mine. Lately, they're from The West Wing, a show that has been off the air for almost 20 years now. I've also done some 9-1-1: Lone Star fanfiction because Rob Lowe is a very fun, intriguing muse to play with and he happens to do shows that resonate with me on a deep, deep level. But why? 

In short? I'm stuck. I'm frustrated with a lot of things, and I'm just not doing very good writing right now. And I want my stories, my babies, to be good. The things I want people to see, the things I think are worth people's time and perhaps even money… they actually mean something. Fanfiction is meaningless for me. But it's writing. It's like training. Like working out to tone up for the winter when my body is completely covered and I only leave the house to walk the dog. 

In recent months, I actually made some progress on some original fiction I've outlined. These are stories that have beginnings, middles, and ends, and I love them. I love them so much I can't touch them while I feel like this. The only thing I can really write are stories that don't really belong to me. 

The positive aspect of all of this is that my writing actually isn't that bad, I just can't bring myself to leave the cozy world of the Bartlet administration or that fake Austin firehouse. Because it's cozy and it doesn't matter or even exist. It's writing for the sake of writing, and that's still something, but I am having so much trouble channeling this energy into something of my own. Even when I use someone else's characters as a tool, like a treasure map, to write until I find my own original story, I get mired in just wanting to stay. It's annoying. 

But I really wanted to see what would happen if Sam Seaborn and Ainsley Hayes were secretly dating. I wanted to see what they would say, so I went for it. And then, because I was in a place in my life where I felt like everything was going to go wrong, I made things go very, very wrong for them. And then I was off to the races. Car crashes. Sex trafficking. Conflicts of interest! Scandal! Next thing I knew, I had a story running on its own legs, and all I had to do was make a couple of adjustments, change the names, 50 Shades of Grey that shit, and boom -- an original political thriller. 

I outlined the whole story. I thought it was strong. I thought it was sexy and fun and would make for a decent popcorn novel. And every time I got to writing it, I felt like I was forcing a dinosaur to walk through a tailpipe. 

I bugged out over word counts, not being descriptive enough, accuracy, everything. I found every possible distraction and did everything I could to think about this story without actually writing it. 

But a West Wing story about Sam recovering in the aftermath of a hostage situation that I started on a plane two years ago? Almost 100 fucking pages. What. The fuck. Is wrong with me. Because even that stupid thing has some dialogue and moments where I'm like, "I've got to use this for something, there's a story here." 

Even now, I want to rewrite an experiment I did with a Lone Star story and try another one. Again -- this doesn't matter. I don't need it to matter, I just want to play in that sandbox. But what good is this all doing me? Am I even going to build an audience who would end up following me when I write something with my own characters? I want to write things people read, but I'm not doing anything that can go anywhere. 

What's even more frustrating than anything is that I know the solution to this: Just write. Let it suck. Let it be imperfect and fall short of word count. Write it out of order. Write dialogue because writing dialogue is so, so fun, and getting to know these characters that I created myself is such a joy. Just fucking do it. 

I'm far from the first person to feel like this, but boy howdy, does it suck to be a person who feels like this.