Fan Fiction.net

I'll admit...towards the end of middle school I was OBSESSED with fan fiction.  I consumed it in mass quantities.  I fell in love with creative writing at the age of eight, and had been dreaming of literary fame ever since.  So when I discovered fan fiction, I obviously had to write some myself.  What I find most astonishing, in retrospect, is how much time and effort I put into it.  I wrote 120 pages of a single RENT fan fiction (still incomplete...my computer was smashed and I lost everything).  120 pages of a "new" novel would have been a good start, but suddenly I had 120 pages of one fiction plus dozens of others that were essentially useless.  I couldn't use them to further my dreams of success.  A few times I thought about changing some of the names, twerking a few things to make it fresh, but it seemed wrong to take it out of the RENT universe.  So I was particularly compelled by the Henry Jenkins article we read this week.  What would happen if my old fan fictions became usable?  I started that fiction in 2005, and to this day I still get messages from people who read my stories, begging me to continue them.  Maybe this class will give me a reason to.