Hello from the Mainland

Hi everyone,
I've recently stumbled across this website by chance when I was looking for some inspiration online. What a great website! I love the friendly and supportive tone to it.
I am new to writing, I don't even know if I would call myself a writer. When does someone start calling themselves a writer? I guess it's when you feel like you are one.
I've started writing a few months ago, driven by a slight obsession with the characters of Cheryl and Judd from Outrageous Fortune. For those of you who don't know this NZ show it has screened for 5 series, with a 6th in production, and the last episode of the 5th series ended with a huge cliffhanger back in Aug/Sept 09.
So for months after that, I put up with ideas and stories in my head which would not go away about how the story of Cheryl and Judd could carry on. So one day I decided to write a little post on the Outrageous forum.
Ever since that first post in December I have been encouraged by the other members to carry on, and is has turned into a rather long story with 42000 words so far.
I enjoy coming up with new ideas and thinking about what's going to happen next even though I never sat down and planned an outline from the start. The rewards are the comments and speculations from others which I get hours after posting - a sort of instant gratification!
So I've discovered a new hobby, and I'm starting to dread the moment when I will have to bring this story to an end (when Series 6 will air and we will know what is really going to happen), because so far, I've never had the desire or urge to write about anything else. I don't know if I could come up with the ideas for different characters?! I've decided to enrol in a fiction writing weekend workshop in the upcoming school holidays to broaden my mind and maybe get some ideas on how to start something different.
So, after this rather long introduction, I'd just like to say hello, and if you want to find out about my version of Cheryl and Judd go to
http://www.outrageousfortune.co.nz/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1615&...
(Any supportive feedback would be great but please consider that it is a huge step for me to go from a slightly obsessed OF Fan community to a community of writers whose standards in terms of plot, language etc. inevitably must be much higher. And I don't mean that in a demeaning sort of way to the people on the OF forum. If it wasn't for their encouragement I wouldn't have carried on.)