I'm Christa Tomlinson, Bitch!

You may be wondering what I'm working on (more than likely you're not). I'm taking a story that I wrote and rewriting it in order to self-publish it this spring. Why am I rewriting it? Because the original story was fanfiction, posted on the giant archival site, FanFiction.net. Now you may be wondering, what the hell is fanfiction? Fanfiction, or FF, are basically stories that are written by fans of a particular movie, book, TV series etc. These stories feature the original characters and worlds in stories told by people who love to create and love their fandoms. Is a lot of the stuff crap? Oh boy is it ever. But some of it is good. And some of it is famous. You might know where I'm going with this.

EL James, author of the Fifty Shades series, started off as a FF writer. Her popular series is based off of the world created by Stephanie Meyer in Twilight. And I don't know much about her, but Cassandra Clare of Mortal Instruments started off as a fanfiction writer too.

Looking at the success of these women, I can't help but think, Hey, I can do that too! So that's my goal. Taking a story that found some success and popularity on FF.net and making huge changes to it. All in hopes of publishing it on my own and maybe making a little money off of it. Because I like money. And cheese.

Now maybe you're thinking, Who the hell does she think she is, EL James? Okay maybe that's not you. That's actually me in my head imagining you saying that. My invisible audience as I like to call it (Very judgey, that invisible audience). Like everybody else, creative types especially, I worry about people judging me and finding my work lacking. It can be hard to push past the voices of that invisible audience. And nothing stomps on my self confidence more than being scared that people will think I'm reaching above myself (it's a problem in derby too, but I digress). But James, Clare, and every other successful author out there are just people. Just like me. What separates us is the fact that they sat their asses down and PRODUCED.

That's what I have to do. I have to ignore all the time sucks out there. To help with that I set social media blockers on my computer for certain hours of the day. If I try to go to Twitter when I'm not supposed to up pops the home page for EL James as a gentle reminder to get back to work. So far it's helping me to laugh and stay on task. I've also found a way to fight off my insecurities of 'going above my station' whenever I'm working on my goals to become a successful author. As soon as that evil little voice asks me, Who do you think you are, EL James? I just reply with, "No. I'm Christa Tomlinson, bitch!"

Neither Rick James or Dave Chapelle have endorsed this message.