The fifth post in the series “Stories Save My Life” is written by Rae Hanson, a Florida-based TV/media blogger. This is an amazing story of how love for a childhood story led to an adult career. This post excites me! I hope you’ll take time to read it and comment. It’s truly a unique story!

Rae is a witty writer and a great media savant. Follow her on Twitter and on Tumblr and check out her TV blog archives at www.RamblingsofaTVWhore.com.

Thanks!

-Sarah

Stories Save My Life: Meet the Teen Sleuths in My Life

Guest Poster: Rae Hanson

I’ve been struggling with what to write here. Not because I didn’t know what to say but because I’ve got so many stories to tell about the stories in my life. It seemed an impossible task to pick just one (and I didn’t). And, while it feels like a betrayal not to talk about how Buffy Summers and Joey Potter helped me through that first year of terrifying independence, I decided to focus on the teenage sleuths in my life.

They say you always remember your first but I don’t. I just know at some point I started reading those vintage hard cover Nancy Drew books and became Obsessed. Yes. With a capital O. I’m a sucker for a mystery and there was no one more capable of handling the mysterious than Nancy Drew. Oh, how I loved solving mysteries with Nancy Drew! (Always Nancy Drew, never just Nancy.) And, you know, it didn’t hurt that one of her best friend’s had a boy’s name, George. As a little girl who hated her own boy name, I was (still am!) all over stories with girls with boy names being cool.

It wasn’t long before I graduated from the hard cover books to the “newer” paperback versions, The Nancy Drew Files. I devoured those puppies. “Covet” doesn’t even begin describe my need to own ever book in the series. One small problem though… I lived in Germany. The Army bases probably have their own Barnes & Nobles these days but back then the base bookstore was about the size of an airport bookstore. I don’t remember any of them having more than four aisles, if that. As you can imagine, the Nancy Drew supply didn’t quite reach my demand. But every time we went to the PX (post exchange) or the grocery store, we’d stop in the bookstore so I could search through the stacks for the series I was missing. Finding one was so rare that I never minded when I’d get home and realize I had duplicated a book I already had. The high I’d get from the success of finding what I thought was a new book was too great. And, let’s face it, I didn’t mind solving that mystery again. Not if it meant spending more time with Nancy Drew.

Every summer, we’d return to the States for two weeks. Though we primarily spent those two weeks in Maine, occasionally we’d visit one of my sisters who lived elsewhere. I can remember going to visit my oldest sister when she lived in Ann Arbor. She took me to Book Heaven. To this day, I cannot tell you the name of the bookstore. I just remember that it was three stories and filled to the brim with books. The children’s section was on the third floor and I remember sprinting up those stairs as fast as my little legs could carry me, barely able to contain my glee. (True Story: To this day, that glee’s still there, knocking against my insides when I’m climb the stairs or ride the escalator at multi-level bookstores.)

Let’s all take a moment and imagine the wonder that must have passed over my face when I finally got to that top floor and got my first look at the shelves of Nancy Drew books. Yes, shelves. God only knows how many books I conned my family into buying that day. I’m sure I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the store without all the books I was missing from my collection. After all, it’d be at least another year before I’d have this kind of access to them again! Freaking kids these days, they have NO IDEA. Oh, the havoc I could have reeked if I had had Amazon back then!

I understand the reluctance people feel towards e-readers. I love my Kindle but looking at it doesn’t give me that same sense of calm and nostalgia looking at my Nancy Drew collection lined up on my shelf does. You didn’t think I’d gotten rid of them, did you? As if! I need to pass that legacy on! Who knows if I’ll ever have kids (seems more and more unlikely as the years pass) or they will even like reading (Can you imagine my horror if they don’t?! I might disown them.) but, if I do, I want these mythical kids of mine to have physical proof of just how much Nancy Drew meant to me. That I’d haul her books around with me through dozens of moves, from country to country, across oceans. Because you can’t just throw away the person who gave you so much joy and taught you that girls can solve mysteries too and that sometimes the most important things in life are good friends. She may just be a teenage sleuth on paper but, to me, she’s so much more.

“Wow, you suck at this Nancy Drew stuff. You should get a new hobby.” 

CUT TO A “FEW” YEARS LATER

I didn’t like Veronica Mars at first. Shocking, I know. It took me about four episodes to come around. Never have I been so happy that I stuck with a TV show. I cannot imagine my world without Veronica. Surely I would have given in eventually, right? Because who can deny the awesomeness of this show. Nancy Drew clearly had an influence on my young life but Veronica Mars was a life raft. I was going through a rough patch when this show entered my life. I needed an escape, someone else’s world to get lost in for a bit. I was consuming a lot of books at the time but I needed something more. A story that wasn’t over so quickly, one in which I could truly immerse myself. The mystery of who killed Lilly Kane was just what I needed.

After Buffy (and Angel) ended I was adrift. There were plenty of shows I loved but none that sunk their hooks into me and wouldn’t let go. None that got my creative juices flowing quite the same way. Until Veronica. Not only was I actively trying to solve the mystery along with Veronica, I could not get enough of all the characters on the show. They were all so complicated and three-dimensional. For the first time ever, a show made me want more.

I generally have absolutely no interest in fan-fiction. I don’t begrudge anyone the need for it; I just prefer my stories to come from the canon. But with this show I was not only seeking it out, I was writing it!! I had these characters chattering in my head and it was the only to shut them up. Suddenly I understood the motivation behind fan-fiction. Good or bad, it’s one of the only outlets fans have when they find characters who speak to them.

More importantly, I had to talk about the show each week. My friends weren’t watching it so I wrote about it online. Which led me to other people who also needed to discuss each episode (in a sometimes disgusting amount of detail). It didn’t matter if something was just a throwaway prop; we analyzed everything to death (Lilly’s!). And I loved it. There it was, my escape route. The more I “talked” with other fans about the show, the less I stressed the cruddy chaos that was my career. It was no longer the focus of my life and that was a godsend. It happened gradually and took me much longer to see it but that was when I realized what had been missing from my life: Stories.

Oh sure, I was reading tons of books and watching a lot of TV and at the movie theater as often as possible. But that was just me unconsciously trying to plug the hole. I was shoving stories in left and right hoping they’d fill it. But there’s only a minimum amount of creativity needed for the consumption of stories. It keeps your imagination active but it’s not forcing you to stretch and really use those muscles.

I wish I could say I had some big epiphany about this. Alas, that wasn’t the case. I mostly just kept obsessing about a TV show online and got lucky. Timing is everything right? This was pre-social media but blogs were taking off in a big way and PR companies were paying attention. I still have no idea what led them to me but I got invited to a blogger set visit… to the set of Veronica Mars.

If I were famous, I’d have suspected I was beingPunk’d. But Ashton was nowhere to be found and the invite was legit. I have no research to back me up but I do believe it was the first ever set visit of that type (and if it wasn’t the first, it was definitely one of the first).  I did, however, spend the whole trip pinching myself to convince myself it was real. I held on to my disbelief until we were actually standing in the courtyard for Neptune High.

My actual experience on the set is a story for another time but was it. This story with its characters who I had fallen in love with had led me to this moment in time. Where I got to watch the people behind the show bring it to life. And the seed was planted. Because I left that set with the memory of how much I loved creating stories myself. Reminded of what it was like to take an idea and create something wonderful with it. I didn’t really understand those feelings immediately. I just knew I was drawn to the energy on that set and that I wanted it in my life.

This story would be so great if I could now tell you how my whole life changed as a result of the set visit. But I can’t. Oh, it did change. The chaos is certainly gone. I’m not sure the calm that replaced it qualifies as a good thing but it’s not an entirely bad thing either. It was just the tip of the iceberg as far as blogger set visits. I now have a bunch of exciting experiences I wouldn’t give up for the world.  And with each set visit, I’m once again reminded that it’s still out there. That elusive creative energy I want in my life is out there and I know I’ll eventually find it. Thanks to an annoying tiny blonde teenage sleuth who opened my eyes to the possibilities.