as i grow older and my frontal lobe develops, i find myself becoming less obsessive about fandom stuff in the same way i was when i was a teen or in my early 20s. i still think about fiction a lot and engage with it very emotionally and deeply but it feels less manic, i guess, i don't know. one of the consequences of this has been my moving away from writing fic. i'm not saying i'm never going to write any fic again, although that very well might be the case. i just want to demonstrate that because i'm feeling more distant from fandom, but i still want to write, i'm finally in a place where i can work on original writing, which is something i've failed to consistently do in the past.
my inability to produce original work that meets my own standards has long been a cause of consternation for me. as a child i was praised for my writing and encouraged to submit essays and such to all sorts of competitions or whatever, which made me not want to write at all. i think i developed a complicated relationship with creating because any talent i displayed was treated as if its only worth was getting me a leg up in my college applications or helping me stand out among my peers. i had a lot of academic anxiety and none of this pressure helped with it, so i never really started developing original stories.
what i did continue to write was fanfiction. i've had less-active periods, but i started writing fanfiction when i was eleven years old, publishing haruhi suzumiya stuff on fanfiction.net lol. i'm now 27 (bow down to your FANDOM ELDER kids) and up until 2024 i was still writing and posting fic. i never really believed that what i was doing was Real Writing, though. i sure as hell never called myself a writer, even in fandom spaces. i just couldn't bring myself to use that word as an identifier; it felt wrong and kind of pretentious. (this coming from someone who has half a million words of writing published on ao3!) maybe if i was younger and started now, in a world where somehow everybody knows what fanfiction is, things would be different, but when i was a kid it was definitely only something other weirdo dorks like myself knew about and engaged with. so i developed shame around writing fanfiction and didn't talk about it with anyone i knew in real life.
honestly, a part of me still doesn't consider fic to be Real Writing. there are many fics i highly value. one of the books on my bookshelf right now started as one of the original works published on ao3, which are not the same as fics, obviously, but use many of their conventions. incredible authors like signalbeam have influenced my writing and there are fics i return to again and again that evoke so much emotion in me. but... the writing i value the most is not fanfiction. i have read widely my whole life and i have a warm relationship with works of classic literature. i am a politically conscious person and i have a deep admiration of the power of nonfiction writing that analyzes and criticizes the structures that govern our lives. this kind of writing is the type i admire the most, and that's as far away from fic as you can get. if you're feeling upset or unsettled by this paragraph, i'll come back to this point near the end of this post, don't worry. i want to go back to talking about original writing for a little bit, though.
i don't think it's accurate to say that the novel i'm working on is influenced by fanfiction, but because i've only ever really written fanfiction before and my novel is a character-driven romance with queer characters, i anticipate that to some people it might seem a little cringe, in the same way fanfiction is. so i struggle to talk about it with anyone at all. even now, i downplay my nerdy interests to people i associate with irl because i live a life primarily governed by shame and guilt. just kidding but shame and guilt definitely are prominent threads woven into the grand tapestry that hangs on the wall of my mind palace. maybe it's because i grew up religious. anyway, one of my closest friends is an aspiring cultural critic type who is all about the WRITING GRINDSET and i have not even told him i am working on a novel, even though we talk all the time, because he is not someone who engages in fandom or cares deeply about fictional stories. i fear he would simply not understand, that he would look down on me, especially because he knows i've written fic and has been very incurious about it. though i have no desire to write the kind of stuff he writes, maybe i subconsciously believe he is more of a Real Writer than i am? i don't know. it's possible.
one thing that gives me pause is knowing people have had heartfelt, genuine reactions to my fic. i've gotten amazing comments from people telling me they felt represented by the way i depicted characters, more people than i can count saying they cried over my work, people saying that i changed the way they think about life and about love... even if i'm inclined to think fic is less Real than more established forms of writing, those emotions are real. that bridge of connection i formed with my readers, even if it's ephemeral, even if it's shallow-- or, if we're keeping with the bridge metaphor, poorly constructed-- exists! (it literally feels pretentious and weird to me to say My Readers, in the same way calling myself a writer feels weird, to give you an example of my bizarre neuroses in action) i will never not be amazed that my writing can evoke such emotions in others. i will never take that for granted. i feel very uncomfortable with being put on a pedestal or treated with anything like reverence, because i myself am a very irreverent person, but i will never be put off when someone earnestly tells me something they loved about my work. in the same way writing necessitates baring a part of your soul, it takes vulnerability to say that you saw a part of yourself in a work of (fan)fiction, and i recognize that.
i'm not really sure how to conclude this impromptu essay, because i'm still in the middle of thinking through all these things and haven't reached any conclusions myself. i think once i've made more progress on #mynovel -- when it feels more Real to me -- i'll be able to talk about it with more pride. maybe i should have more pride in myself in general. maybe none of this matters as much as i think it does. maybe it matters MORE than i think it does. i don't know. i'll just keep chugging away on my starcrossed space lesbians even though i'm lucky if my lazy ass manages to write 200 words a day. i don't think anyone is actually going to read this tbh so i might as well just talk about my day. i got back from an iftar party at like midnight and now it's 2:30 AM and i'm slightly worried because i have to get up early tomorrow because i'm the only person in the world who has a standing therapy appointment scheduled biweekly on sundays at 10 am. i don't really want to sleep though because i want to watch jerma's playthrough of RE9. fuck!
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