AKA The Power of Ridiculous Writing
I never thought I’d be talking about fanfiction on the internet for such a broad audience of my future employers. Employers who will—inevitably—find this and quietly delete my application. But, I’m a champion of the people and I will speak the truth: reading fanfiction was a cornerstone experience of my developmental growth. For better or for worse, the internet christened me in the only way it could: Lord of the Rings Legolas x human!reader angst.
While my friends were reading about the Jonas Brothers and Harry Styles, I wept over my iPad Mini, the sheets of my bed pulled over my head—the inevitability of mortality scorched into my corneas because I didn’t know how to adjust my screen brightness (another explanation for my tears).
Legolas was a gateway drug and soon enough I was reading fanfiction for books and movies that I didn’t know anything about. I was indoctrinated into a world where creativity had no restriction. Anyone could write! No need to pass middle school, no need to write under stuffy pretenses, no need to even tell anyone that you’d accrued a cult following across four platforms. Anyone and everyone wrote whatever they wanted and that realization changed my life.
For one, it gave me the courage to reject any notions about what a book ought to look like, because there really is an audience for anything. Maybe more importantly, I realized that I could try my hand at writing.
Despite these powerful revelations, I really only wrote small gobbets meant for my eyes only—stories of characters that existed only in my mind. So, I wasn’t really writing fanfiction. Which isn’t to say I didn’t try! In fifth grade, I wrote two lines of a Percy Jackson fanfic, but then I tore it to pieces when I realized that Annabeth would hate the narrative I was making for her—and I could never do my girl dirty like that.
Instead, I wrote little short stories and made up worlds. I had all these great ideas that I wanted to explore, but eventually, I felt paralyzed by the idea of actually committing to the art of writing them. I didn’t know if my skills were developed enough to tell the stories that demanded my attention. If I couldn’t write perfectly, I didn’t want to do it at all.
Something snapped inside of me a couple nights ago. In a fit of sleep deprivation, hunger, and procrastination, I wrote my first fanfic.
I was insane with power. I laughed maniacally as lightning flashed in the background, my creation writhing and groaning as it came to life before me. My roommates watched in horror as I rolled on the floor, giggling and kicking my feet. For the first time, I was truly alive.
That’s how it felt at 1 AM.
The next morning, I realized something truly incredible had happened.
I was freed from the confines of my self-imposed creativity block. I had more fun while writing than I’d had in years. A dormant spark had been rekindled inside of me, and I’m doing everything in my power to keep it from extinguishing.
I’ve started a writing practice where I write for fifteen minutes everyday, no matter what. I use an archaic notebook and whatever crayon is closest to me, but writing digitally is good too! I sit down to write and I don’t stop until my timer is ringing too loudly in whatever public space is unfortunate enough to host me. The writing can be about absolutely anything.
One of my entries begins “I don’t know what to write, but the timer is already going and I have class soon.” From there, it actually grew into a moderately coherent discussion about the wounds of friendship and the struggles of intimacy.
The important part is to write something down, even if it’s ridiculous and has no meaning to anyone but yourself. I want to be published someday. The writing I’m doing now, silly or childish as it may seem, is changing me from a “person who wants to write” into a writer. Give yourself the space to be as clumsy and as imaginative as possible, because you never know what will come from those fifteen minute sessions, or from the 1 AM fanfiction frenzy.
It’s a lesson that’s taken me far too long to learn, but skill comes from practice. And practice can make you look like a mad scientist, but I wear the lab coat proudly.