A fabulously gay blind author.
If you take enough creative writing classes, or listen to enough "gurus," you start to realize that 90% of writing advice is just gatekeeping wearing a monocle. It’s classist, it’s often ableist, and it is obsessed with "restraint." Kill your darlings. Show, don't tell. Trim the fat. Fanfiction teaches you to burn the rulebook. It teaches you that "indulgence" is actually a rigorous study of emotional resonance. It allows you to sprawl. It allows you to write 50,000 words of pure angst just to explore the specific texture of grief, or an entire chapter dedicated to the domestic intimacy of two people sharing a bed, focusing on nothing but the warmth of skin and the sound of breathing. Traditional publishing calls that "pacing issues." Fanfiction calls it "what we actually came here for." It is a better teacher because it prioritizes impact over propriety. It taught me how to write not for a critic in a tweed jacket, but for a person alone in their room at 3 AM who desperately needs to feel like they aren't the only broken thing in the universe.