We're Not Sleeping, We're Just Dreaming (Waterparks fanfic)

End

Author's note:

I have always loved creative writing, since I was a child. As I was a lonely kid who moved internationally three times, long-term relationships and friendships were off the table. I felt very alone, alienated - at the time, I didn't know that some of my feelings of not quite fitting in where due to my transgender identity and I felt this overwhelming need to fit an ideal which now looking back as an adult seems ridiculous. Creative writing was an escape, I could be whoever I needed to be. 

As a teenager struggling with mental health, I did at one point turn to creative writing as an escape from a tragedy which struck me at 14 and I didn't have the skills to cope with the loss. I explored feelings similar to my own through pop-punk and "emo" music and I quickly discovered fan fiction where I could read about characters similar to me, who were going through the things that I had gone through, and I felt far less alone because I finally knew there were people like me out there. Fanfiction to me was a better writing choice because my characters were all set up - they were the musicians I admired - and using these characters the way I wanted to explore stories I could create from just a thought and my own life experiences was extremely beneficial to me. Unfortunately with my academic work taking front seat for the previous three years, and then a job and university preparation on top of that, creative writing disappeared from my life. The 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, however, having cancelled my end-of-year sixth form exams and giving me weeks upon weeks of free time to spend however I wished, caused me to fall in love again, and I present to you, this fan fiction, written in my bedroom during lockdown. I'm pretty proud of it - quickest book I have ever written, and possibly the best.

...just you wait for part two.

Ray Awsten Emerson Parker

Fanfiction Author: "We're Not Sleeping, We're Just Dreaming" (2020)