Hey there. I’m Firehound427. Welcome to my profile page. Like you, I’ve got a passion for writing, but there have been times when that passion has been severely tested.

It all started back in 2011. I’d seen this movie Rio, and it was a real inspiration to me. It was certainly enough of an inspiration to make me sign up to this site. Within a month, I’d already written a couple of fanfics and started being a part of the community.

Now if this were some kind of fairytale, it would be plain sailing, but nothing ever goes that way. There were some ideas I’d had that I just couldn’t seem to make them into proper stories. I’d just give up after a couple of chapters. That has always been a problem of mine.

It was about six months after I signed up that I started writing an updated version of my first fanfic. It was great. Probably one of my best fanfics ever, and quite a few authors were willing to let me use their original characters in the story. But I’d also did some things wrong in the past. I’d had quite a few ideas shot down after trying to write them, and I’d also done some other things that I regret.

After writing that fanfic, I decided to move away from Rio and try my hand at some other fandoms. Cars was a big one for me, as I settled down and tried to write a proper fanfic, but even though I had wrote a couple of humorous oneshots, a proper story just eluded me. I tried writing about a war, a storm, a big manhunt, an elite unit, a trucking convoy, a racing team and a few other ideas, but I could never make any of them stick, either due to reality rejecting them or my own motivation failing me. That’s always been my big enemy

I also tried writing for other fandoms. Hawaii Five-0 was one of the more successful ones, but even though I had completed one fanfic, plans to turn it into a trilogy just fell through. Pan Am was a big failure, one fanfic, two chapters, and I never tried again.

Sometime after that, I decided to return to Rio to write another fanfic. It was just too ambitious and I should’ve realized it from the start. I dumped the project, but not before I’d written and published a chapter. Authors had offered their original characters again, and were disappointed when I deleted the fanfic. I’m not going to go into too much detail, as that episode is still a bit of a sore spot for me, but one thing led to another. An aggressive response led to an aggressive reaction, and I’d stormed off, vowing never to return to Rio again. I’m not naming any names here. Maybe it was partly his fault, for acting in such an aggressive manner. But at the same time, it was partly my fault for biting off more than I could chew, and reacting so strongly when made to face the music. I am not proud of what I did and said that day.

After more aborted projects, I eventually settled on two fanfics in the latter part of 2012. One was a comedy road-trip based on The Newsroom, the other a serious action fic for You’re Under Arrest and heavily inspired by The Last Stand. That’s always been a part of my ideas, taking inspiration from movies, TV shows or even vehicles, and building a fanfic around them. Anyway, it was while I was writing them in early 2013 that my motivation just completely dropped. You could say I exiled myself, but I’m not sure whether that is completely true. In any case, I just couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d left behind.

It was almost a year later, in 2014, that I saw Rio 2. And just like that, just like three years ago, the inspiration returned. I was finally ready to begin writing fanfics again. I took the hard decision to get rid of the Newsroom fic, especially as the chapters I’d written back in 2012 was of a generally poor quality. At the same time, I focused on finishing the YUA fanfic, and accomplished pretty much a year after the last chapter had been posted.

A lot of things had changed since that chapter was posted. A lot of things had happened. But I set out to finish what I started, something that I was never able to do in the past. And then, I took a step back and thought about what I wanted to do. Whether I wanted to quit fanfic writing, or whether I wanted to continue, through the hardship, through the regret, and continue to write fanfiction. I made my choice, to keep going.

I will admit right away that back then, I was not a good person. I am not proud of the mistakes I made in the past. If I got the chance, I would probably turn back time and stop myself from making those mistakes. But nobody gets that chance. At the same time, I have had the opportunity to learn from those mistakes, to make sure I do not do them again. I may regret what I’ve done in the past, but I will make sure that those lessons are remembered. I will make sure I become a better writer. A better person.

I will not take on any project I feel does not have a chance of working. I will only focus on one fanfic at a time. I will write more than one chapter before I publish, to make sure I can commit to a project. And I will not accept any original character requests, until I can make completely sure that I will not have a repeat of the dark episode that caused me to turn away from the fandom that started it all.

So where do I begin? You may have noticed that I have a profile picture of a road somewhere in the desert. That, I feel, represents the road to redemption that I am now on. It is also a theme of my newest fanfic, a Rio fanfic. I am fully aware of what I said on that day, and I am ready to return, to ignore my own vow, to redeem myself. I will put the past behind me, and I will return to what I signed up for. To write a fanfiction, for a movie called Rio, and to do it properly.

If you have made it to this part, then you will know how I joined, how I screwed up, and how I learned from my mistakes to come back stronger and better. I have changed since then. I will not make the same mistakes that drove me away. I am now on the long road to redemption, and I hope that you will understand where I came from, so that you will know where I am going.