Learning to Love Myself

If you only read fanfiction, you will not be able to write original stories well.

Reading books does not have to be expensive. It can be completely free. Project Gutenberg exists. So does the Internet Archive's lending library.

If you want to write a novel, you are kept to a pretty strict word range--generally 70-120k words, though that varies a bit up or down depending on the genre. Some genres have fairly strict structural and plot expectations, as well.

A romance novel is a specific thing. A mystery novel is a specific thing. Being able to write a shippy fanfic, even one of the correct length to count as a romance novel, does not necessarily mean that you know how to write a romance novel--because there are different expectations between them.

Fanfiction is often in conversation with other fanfiction, and published fiction is often to varying degrees in conversation with other published fiction--but despite what a lot of people seem to think, published fiction is often not actually in conversation with fanfiction, even if fanfiction is in conversation with published fiction.

One thing that you tend to see with people writing original fiction for publication who don't really read much published fiction in that genre is that they will sometimes approach it with the attitude that they are writing something that nobody has ever thought of before. It is a new, different, groundbreaking approach, with new, different, groundbreaking ideas that nobody else has done and nothing can compare to--

And that simply is not usually the case. Finding comps can be hard, it's one of the worst parts about querying, etc., etc., but in many genres, you are not inventing something totally new. You are not the first person to think, what if this romance novel doesn't need to have a happy ending (spoiler alert: it's not a romance novel). You are not the first person to write queer polyamorous urban fantasy. You are not the first person to write a book with queer characters or disabled characters or non-white characters or non-Christian characters. Your groundbreaking new idea for a sci fi thing that you repurposed from a fanfic, that just feels dated and derivative, because it is, and anyone who knows the genre would know that.

That arrogance and that dismissal of existing publishing history and norms shows in people's writing.

I understand—and agree with—that sentiment of, “I want slower deliveries by drivers who are paid better,” as one recent tumblr post put it. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to produce and consume less as a culture, and that an actual substantive conversation about politics should involve willingness to relinquish the many modern luxuries that are built on exploitation.

I don’t think these are good examples of those luxuries, though.

Large budget movies are possible because consumers (and investors) are willing to pay for them. A large budget is actually a necessary component in making sure workers are being adequately compensated; the fact that they currently are often exploited by studios is a result of deliberate misallocation of resources, not anything intrinsic to the size of the production. Same thing goes with high-quality video games. As for releasing a new film/game every month/year, that’s only unsustainable because there’s only a handful of monopolistic studios doing it. In a well-regulated industry that encourages growth and competition, we could see tens, if not hundreds of studios producing big-budget films and games. And, with a well-compensated and socially-supported citizenry, consumers would have enough disposable income to support it.

Similarly, the problem with soda isn’t that we have 80 brands; it’s that we have two. And those two brands each own 800 different labels. In a healthy economy, these monopolies would be dissolved, and we could support well over 80 moderately-sized independent beverage companies producing their own sodas.

Same-day delivery, again, could be easily supported with proper allocation of resources. Currently, we have huge centralized distributors like Amazon exploiting gig-workers with slave-wages to ferry cheap mass-produced crap to people, and that’s what makes it bad, not the speed at which they do it. If instead, we had something like a super-robust USPS, with well-compensated deliverypeople working reasonable hours within a decentralized network of independent-but-cooperative suppliers, there would be absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get something delivered to you from the distro ten miles down the road within a day.

When we critique capitalism, and they respond, “Yeah, well capitalism made the cell phone you’re using!” our response shouldn’t be, “Oh shit u right,” it should be, “No, capitalism made the cell phone I’m using break after a year so I’ll buy a new one, and they use slave labor to do it while they pocket the rest.”

nowadays I might pay for rush shipping on sewing supplies if I need them for a project deadline. 100 years ago, I could just go to a store and buy silk thread, a zillion different types of braid in different fibers, cut glass or steel buttons, a tailor’s ham for ironing, a needle board for ironing velvet, etc. there were entire stores just for ribbons, for faux foliage, for specialty sewing machine attachments, for individual varieties of fabric. and most of it was locally produced

especially since I live in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. if you told someone in 1924 that I couldn’t find any newly-made glass buttons for sale in a city the size of BOSTON, they’d look at you like you were insane. doubly so if you told them that buttons, period, could only be purchased at like three stores in the area, from maybe two different brands

today I go to the craft store and it’s. one brand of polyester thread. maybe seven colors of cotton thread, all dull or dark. one size and brand of snaps. one size and brand and type of ironing board. plastic buttons (MAYBE a few cards of wood or metal). flat polyester ribbon trim in a few sizes and colors. and that’s pretty much it