The Challenge Helps

With all of the time I have been spending on Tumblr lately, I have found myself getting deeper and deeper into the Dragon Age fandom (and to a lesser extent the Mass Effect fandom). That has included finding and reading a lot of really fun fan fiction.

This in turn has led to me wanting to write more fan fiction.

I have been kind of dithering over this, mulling over ideas and trying to decide where (or if) to start. Earlier this week I finally got the kick in the pants that I guess I have been waiting for. A group on LiveJournal has decided to host a "big bang" for Mass Effect. Basically it is a drive to inspire new fiction and art within the fandom. Intrigued by the concept, I looked up the information on it.

For fic writers the minimum story length is 8,000 words, and we will have until September 25 to write it (with a few checkpoints and hopefully a beta-read along the way). I saw that word count and actually scoffed. Two months for 8,000 words? Dude.

Meanwhile, about two weeks after sign-ups end, authors are required to submit a short summary of their story for the artists. The artists will then choose one that sounds interesting to draw an illustration or companion piece for.

Then, at the end of all of that, all of the stories will be posted along with their companion art for all of the fans to share and enjoy.

I had never heard of a big bang before this, but oh my goodness it just sounds fun. While telling my husband about it I even came up with a story idea, yay! So I went ahead and signed up to do this and I am really kind of excited. As crazy as I get in November doing Nanowrimo, that challenge to hit a certain word count every day was an amazing motivator, and I love the sense of accomplishment I get from hitting my numbers. Also, I think this will be a good warm up for November as well.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of crossover with Mass Effect and Dragon Age fans, and after hearing about the Mass Effect big bang, there is now one in the works for Dragon Age too for later in the summer. This is excellent news to me.

I need to write more, and this is a good way to do that while adding a little bit of fun.

To sign up for the big bang I had to create a LiveJournal account of course (I actually had one until earlier this year that I signed up for ages ago and never ever did anything with so it got deleted--but this is okay because it gives me a fresh start this way). So I did that.

I figure no use letting it go to waste. I'll be rounding up all of my old written fan fiction (mostly Stargate Atlantis) and posting it on my LJ account, and that will be the home to anything new I write, which will most likely be Dragon Age and Mass Effect. I've put the link up over there on the right in case anyone ever has any interest in checking it out, though I know it's not everyone's cup of tea.

So, there you go. Challenge issued, challenge accepted. Let the plotting begin!