I am admittedly echoing something I saw in a different post here so I am well aware that this is not an original thought for full disclosure, but I think a lot of hobbyist writers don't really like writing that much. And I don't mean that in a rude way. In fact I'm not talking about the quality of the end result at all (although admittedly I do think it often shows); I mean there is a huge contingency of people who consider themselves hobbyist writers who have pretty much made their identity as writers "I hate doing this and it sucks and I will cut every possible corner I can." It's the "no editing we post at 2:00 AM without rereading like men" syndrome. It's the constant jokes about working on 30 projects at once and never finishing a single one.
& like obviously I understand the counterargument here is that, like, keyword is hobbyist, nobody is claiming to be on par with the professionals or the greats (though, tbf, sometimes they are, read: "The Divine Comedy was fanfic"), but again this is less even a read about quality or me trying to be judgmental or critical about what these people are actually making, though I do think a lot of the "normalized" practices in hobbyist writing spaces are wildly detrimental to developing your skills as an artist, and more about the fact that these people themselves will just nakedly admit, over and over and over, that they don't really enjoy doing it? There are tens of thousands of "relatable" #writeblr posts on here that amount to "tfw you hate writing and it sucks and you don't do it." And it's like well. Idk man. I'm having fun. I'm writing because I enjoy writing, you know.
The post I saw about this suggested (and I believe they are correct) that part of the issue is that a lot of hobbyist writers are actually like, "story tellers," vaguely. They like a mix of various types of stories, movies and tv series and webcomics and video games and books, etc, and want to make their own characters and tell their own stories. As I've gotten more serious about writing novels to completion even the overwhelming monopoly that the OC industrial complex has on internet writing circles feels increasingly foreign to me because I'm so much more interested in crafting characters befitting of my stories than the other way around; a lot of people seem more interested in just developing characters, vague world-building concepts, story beats and tropes that appeal to them, than really wanting to write a story. This isn't me being mean, these posts will very often admit to it! There is a massive plethora of posts that are like "when you wanna read about your OCxOC ship but you're the only one that can write it 💔" and things of the like. But writing is probably objectively the creative medium that has the lowest barrier for entry. Everyone on tumblr to make these posts will have access to a word processor or pencil and paper. There's a much larger amount of resources and a way higher skill level necessary to, say, make your own movie, or video game, or even webcomic. But they don't really seem to enjoy it on its own at all. Tbh their time probably really would probably be better spent, like, learning to draw comics, or learning to code in Python to start making their own VN, or learning to model in Blender or animate in Flash, I think it's just a much more daunting undertaking than putting words on a page.
Anyway. Again I cannot clarify enough this isn't meant to be from a place of judgment. And I'm not saying writing is easy and fun all the time. Obviously it's not. But it's more that I think I finally noticed one of the major reasons I have such a distinct disconnect from so many online writing spaces. I have a lot of intrinsic motivation and find a lot of intrinsic joy in bringing my stories to life and I think there are a lot of people who are more interested in kind of using the medium of "writing a story" as a means-to-an-end, and there's nothing morally wrong with that, but it creates a pretty big divide in what exactly we're trying to do, sometimes. Like, I think it at least explains why every other post about writing on here amounts to "you're so valid for never finishing anything." Like you are, I guess, whatever that means, but I do actually find it more useful to actually share advice and motivation for how to complete projects than constantly reassuring each other that it's valid to derive such little enjoyment from anything you're working on.
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