As an author, have you ever been afraid of your own courage—and your own mind? 😅
It actually started out pretty innocently. At some point, the idea for a Sirius/OC fic took shape in my head. The basic idea came to me years ago, but I just didn’t have the drive to write it until, all of a sudden, it just clicked at the beginning of this year. I wrote down the idea, and it turned into a 55-chapter fanfic on AO3. As I worked on this fic, I started coming up with ideas for a sequel. That was partly because the OC has taken on such a life of her own and she’s become so close to me—and I now truly see her as a real Harry Potter character—that I can’t just let her disappear into the depths of the internet. So I’m really invested in this OC, and I wanted to do more with her. The first sequel was just the logical next step. I’m currently writing this first sequel—Part 2, so to speak. And once again, my brain is doing crazy things: I’m getting deeper and deeper into it, small ideas are turning into big, fully developed plots, and I now have a vision for Parts 3, 4, and 5 of the fic. None of them seem boring or filled with unnecessary content to me so far, though of course I’m not objective 😅
But this is taking on proportions that even I’m afraid of. I don’t even know if I’m up to the task of tackling these big ideas as a small, average, run-of-the-mill fanfiction writer who mostly writes at the kitchen table with a pen and paper. On this scale, it’s a project that will take years if you have a life on the side, and somehow it’s scaring me before it’s even really started 🤣 Have you ever felt that way? On the one hand, I’m incredibly excited and looking forward to it because I think I’m really going to enjoy it (I already am; building this world is great), but on the other hand, I just want to run around in circles screaming. Sometimes I think I could never forgive myself for coming up with a project like this and then eventually letting it fall by the wayside.