I waded through the fetid Fanfiction swamps (much like that dreck above) in search of the ever-elusive pearl: a well-written story featuring the characters I loved. As a Oncer, I’m also a die-hard Captain Swan shipper, and stories about Hook and Emma are the most popular in the fandom. I found a few good writers, and one day a story idea came to me and I thought, “What the hell – might as well get it out.”

I threw caution to the wind and wrote my first chapter, and then the next, and the next. Thirty-three days and three hundred and eighty-one positive reviews later, I realized two things:

1. I had written over 50,000 words in a little over a month – that’s practically a book.
2. People actually liked my writing and were PMing me to ask for another story.

I’ve written eleven fics now, some over 100k in word count. I kept telling myself I was going to write a YA novel, since it’s a genre I read heavily, but could I really do it?

Fanfic is easy because the world and the characters are already built. Could I build a world from the ground up and populate it with engaging characters that people would actually invest in?

There was only one way to find out.

So I wrote.