...is that it has no hope of being published. Aside from my usual phases of panic that everything I write is rubbish and would never sell, the writing that consumes almost all of my time is absolutely unsellable due to copyright.
If my goal is to get published, then it seems logical that I should spend more time on publishable writing than fan fiction. Certainly I'm not about to stop updating Break Out or The Long and Winding Road, but updating as quickly as I feel the need to takes up time I could be using more productively towards getting published. I do feel like any writing is a good way to get experience, but just look at my other posts—I have tons of original fiction ideas to toy with. Still, fan fiction has the benefit of attracting attention while in-progress, so I don't have to wait until I'm done to get feedback on my writing.
Fan fiction is a different beast than original fiction, as I've very much come to consider in the process of converting The Long and Winding Road from one to the other. Even if they do share a lot of elements, there are also quite a few differences, so the experience I get from fan fiction isn't 100% going towards what I could use in original fiction.
Basically, it just comes down to how productive I want to be. More original fiction time = less fan fiction time. I do want to have fun, though it seems a little weird for fan fiction to be my inception-hobby with writing as my hobby and something else altogether as my occupation. It's a weird balancing act that I'm definitely going to have to shift if I want to make progress on publishable original fiction.
I'm not sure just how or how much I'm going to wean myself off of fan fiction. I hate to disappoint readers, so I don't expect to change any habits as far as already-published (on fanfiction.net) works go, but I feel like I might shift to a slower-updating existence once the second of my big series is over.
Does anyone else have experience with or tips for this?
I, being 12, obviously don't have any experience with this, but if you want somebody to give you some actual comments on your stuff, you could talk to a former English teacher, or someone who has gotten published.
ReplyDeleteObviously none of us want you to stop writing fanfiction, (I'm not reading either Break Out or TLWR until they're done) but if you published something, I would buy it. Your stories are good.
I dunno if that was actually very helpful, but if you want you can always talk about to us on the forums and here.
Thanks, Snuffy!
DeleteI actually had a published author (my Zoology teacher) check out my NaNo novel, but I haven't heard back from him, and he's the type that probably forgot all about it. On the other hand, my mother's friend's husband is a published author, so he'd probably take a look.
At this point I'm putting this sort of stuff off until I have a finished original fiction (other than my NaNo), so that's going to be a while.