Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary returning to writing fanfic. This is going to be a bit of a sappy post reflecting on the last year and celebrating some of my wins/new things I've challenged myself to do.
October 17, 2023 is when I started to write the very first chapter of Burn Forever with Me. I had finished the ACOTAR series about two weeks before and had spent those two weeks reading all the Elucien fic I could. I could feel I had a story in me, so I set out to write it in a month thinking that would be it and I would get it out of my system.
It had been a while since I had written. From 2006-2012 I wrote fanfic very regularly across a few different fandoms. Most of those stories can't be found online anymore. I took a three year hiatus from my Big Bang Theory multichapter fic at the end of 2012, and didn't finish it until 2015 when I had a burst of motivation. I didn't write again until another burst of motivation hit me (Game of Thrones ending) and wrote another one-shot in 2019.
By this point in 2023, I kind of thought my fanfic writing days were behind me. I didn't expect this new resurgence in my life that came about because of this series/this ship. I've tried so many new things writing for this fandom and pushed my writing in directions I never anticipated.
Since last year I have...
-published 441,592 words.
-published 20 fics (a mix of multichapter and one-shots)
-completed four multichapter long fics (huge for me because I used to abandon multichapter fics all the time in my first era)
-Written for several ships, including rare pairs, not just my OTP which is all I did in the past
-Created many OCs, including my focal OC Alexius. Up until now I thought I was kind of hopeless when it came to writing original characters.
-Wrote fanfic for three appreciation weeks
-Wrote MM smut for the first time, and lots of it. I have been reading MM smut for two decades, but did not have a calling to write for a specific ship until Eris x Alexius
-Co-written two fics with @crazy-ache
-pushed myself in what styles of writing I tackle, including writing epistolary for the first time as well as challenging myself to write action/fight scenes which always scared me in the past
-world building in general also used to scare me and now I think it feels so much more approachable as I've been filling in SJM's holes.
-I think my smut writing has evolved a lot too. While I wrote smut in the past and I think I established what my writing voice/style was for smut, I have really had the opportunity to solidify it and try it in different scenes and contexts. I feel a lot more confident than I did back then.
I wanted to highlight these because I think as writers, we are often too hard on ourselves, and it helps to put into context all of the ways we've improved if we are mindful of our progress. I definitely encourage you to sit down one day and remind yourself of all the new things you've done from your starting place. Making this list really put into context all the ways I've changed as a writer in just a year.
I still have a lot more I want to do and new challenges to face in the next year. I hope if you read this, it does help to show you that you can take long breaks and even if you take a step back from writing, you will always be a writer and it'll always be a hobby you can return to and improve your skills, no matter how long its been.
