I forgot how lonely it is to write original fiction.
Where are the kudos? The subscriptions? The comments? The people cheerleading me chapter to chapter? Where are the kind words and compliments and reassurances that what I’m writing isn’t complete crap? Where are the unhinged emojis? The asks on Tumblr? Where are my mutuals in my dms apologizing for not reading the latest chapter right away (side note, you know you don’t have to apologize at all, right??). Where is the fanart? Where are the recs?
Where is my motivation to keep going?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, actually, lately. How the experience of writing fanfic is so unique. How you already have an audience, willing and waiting and captive. And that’s really it, isn’t it? You have an audience. It’s almost performative, writing fanfic. It’s being on a stage, a one-person show (or two, if you do it with a friend); it’s getting live reactions to your performance, it’s feeding off the energy of the crowd and informing it back in a feedback loop; it’s improvised, sometimes, in almost-real-time. It’s building something that you couldn’t have built by yourself. A thing that takes on a life of its own.
It’s an experience you can’t get writing original fiction, and, honestly, not having it is making it hard to write something original at all.
I write what the demons possess me to write.
Some is fanfic about canon characters. Some is about OCs in a fanfic setting. Some is straight-up original fiction. I don’t get to decide. The part of me that writes just…takes control for a while.
(Same with drawing.)
And then I share it. And… yeah. The amount of engagement anything gets is… unpredictable. But generally, the stuff about OCs gets the least engagement.
Feels bad, sometimes. Not gonna lie. Especially when I see post after post going, “Write your OCs! Draw your OCs! Don’t let anyone tell you not to! OCs are great! I love to see OCs! Please show me your OCs, all of them!”
but you can only share stuff about your OCs on those posts so many times, before you feel like you’re filling your timeline with pathetic begging and pleading for attention that you never, ever actually get, even from the people whose posts look like they’re begging to see your stuff.
Because no one’s post is actually begging to see your stuff. Not unless they mention you by name. These are general posts of encouragement. The OP of that post is getting a hundred replies a day and cannot even look at them all, let alone guarantee that your OC would be even remotely interesting to them if they went to look at it.
Nobody is interested in everything. And nothing is interesting to everybody. And people cannot choose what to be interested in.
If your OC is gonna get genuine love from anyone, it’ll be someone who randomly just happens to be that rare person with tastes perfectly adapted to what you made, and then just happens to find it. You can’t orchestrate that sort of miracle. You certainly don’t create an OC with the goal of achieving that miracle.
But by the point I’ve gotten the thing out in public waiting for that to happen someday… by that point my choices are a moot point. I have written it already. It’s out there.
And I’ll probably write more of it later.
Because, for some mysterious reason hidden within my soul, the act of writing it is a motivation it itself.