Writing is suffering

prev, i'm sure you mean my guy Leonid Pasternak

Like you hit your word count for the first time in a week and its like

If you’re feeling this way, there probably isn’t a point and you shouldn’t bother. You’re not enjoying posting your content, so just take a break from it. It’s supposed to be fun. When it stops being fun, stop doing it. Keep things in your head or write them in a doc and just keep them to yourself for a while. You might feel differently again one day.

Sincerely, a writer who went through a period of time feeling a lot like you do but has since found a new perspective on things. It just took some time away, some self-reflection, and a reorientation to what was actually important to me compared to what I thought was important to me. 

There is none. 

Look, fandom is voluntary, always. You chose to engage and participate, you decide how you want to interact with content you’ve enjoyed.

You could write little snippets of a thought about thing on tumblr, tag it, and leave it at that. You could make art. Create gifs. Get into some meta-theories. Write a story. Or you could just take the content, internalize it, and move on. 

There’s zero obligation to contribute to any fandom we’re interested in, it’s part of what makes fandom so amazing: Every piece of content we get that isn’t from the source is free, a labor of love, given for no other reason than the pure desire to do it. 

And if you’re creating content without that love, without the initial thought that this is something I enjoy doing then maybe you just don’t enjoy it at all? 

This could be as much as a passing thought (which comes and goes, and everyone has them) or a persistent one that constantly beats you down, either way, you need to take a look at yourself and ask whether or not you’re in fandom for the right reasons. 

As great as feedback and validation is, fandom is lawless and unpredictable. 

 You can follow every advice to write a good fic or how to create a following down to a “T”, and it still might not work. You need to decide if you’re okay with that, and if you aren’t - move on.

Step back. Take a break. Try out another fandom. Write something different. Post somewhere new. Take part in some community events. Hell, leave fanfic behind and write original content.