Hello! I wanted to say I really love your work and have been reading and following it for awhile now, and it’s great. I can’t wait till the next update for really any of them (not in a rushing way, because those messages from the people who are rude about that are genuinely ridiculous, but in the way of I can’t wait to see what happens next in your stories because I’m hooked with how good it is). Apologies if it’s an odd ask, but I was wondering about how you got started writing fics? I’ve been wanting to start writing myself for awhile now as well, especially after reading your fics in a, I want to say niche, fandom/crossover space, and it kinda inspired me to want to do something like that myself, but I really have no idea how to start. So, I figured it would be good to ask you, if that’s alright.
Thank you so much for your lovely message! <3
As for how I got started, I can absolutely share, though I fear it may not necessarily help you with advice, but I'll still share. When I started, I was a dyslexic 14-year-old with no idea what the heck I was doing. I wrote a lot of the stuff on fanfiction.net, and wrote mainly for Spider-Man (my hyperfixation at the time) and did crossovers for that. It was one of my first-ever times writing, and it was not good, believe me, the spelling and writing quality were so bad. But I still did it, I still got my ideas written down and saved somewhere.
But it was definitely where my obsessions with crossovers came along, one of my favourite things in the world is seeing characters interact with other characters from different universes and seeing their reactions, especially if they are an OP character that would be underestimated. I would come up with so many stories and scenarios, and I needed to write them down. And with years and years of practice as well as reading a lot of works (after discovering the search by kuedos feature) on Ao3, I kind of learned my writing skills from that. I would bring in the writing style of what I read and pull it into my own work. And over time, writing so often and later having a beta reader to help me, I could see my mistakes, catch them and understand how to get better. I looked at my stats recently for Ao3, and I think I'm at over 500k words written now, and like DAMN, that's a lot.
But honestly, it came from writing down my ideas no matter what, and figuring out the hard part (spelling and grammar) later. Luckily, I managed to find fandoms with very supportive people and comments, and that motivation kept me going to the point where I've written arguably one of my fav things I have done in my life period. It has gotten me many new close friends and, honestly, changed my life. And I'm just glad that I kept going. Now I'm in uni and still make time to work on this, and I am so glad I have that option to.
So my advice to you is this. Even if you want to write something, do it, who cares about the grammar or the spelling or "perfect" writing quality, YOU made it happen, you brought it into the world and can even inspire others, and if you keep working on it, it can only get better. and if you want to make a crossover or write about a niche subject DO IT, be the change you want to see in the world.
When I started on HTN, my first few fics and chapters of that series barely made it about 500 hits. It took until I got to partway through Pet Ghost for it to gain traction, and now Falling Stars is in the top 20 fics for all Transformers works on Ao3. It's honestly insane.
Thanks again for your lovely message! I hope you have a great rest of your day <3
