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Oct 26, 2022: The Thing Nobody Ever Talks About in the Writing Community

There's something I admire deeply about fan fiction writers.

It took me a while to figure out what, exactly, it was. There are many things I admire about fanfic writers, but whenever I spoke to them, learned new acronyms in their language, heard stories of their dedication, or found out that yet another famous author or friend of mine got their start in fanfic, something else tugged at the back of my mind.

All around me was another world of authors happily taking their favorite characters for a spin in stories of their own creation. Their community had the best-run posting platforms, the best search algorithms, the fanbase so dedicated, it made pure Romance readers look tame. The authors who wrote the content those readers coveted did so completely heedless of the fact that fanfic is an un-monetizable genre—at least until you file the serial numbers off, which many of these authors aren't inclined to do.

But this isn't a post about fanfic.

Instead, let me talk for a moment about online publishing.

AO3 (a fanfic writers' site) has seen its fair share of authors drop off the face of the earth, leaving their works—if even that—behind. I would hazard a guess that anyone who's spent time on Wattpad has, at some point, encountered some variant of the same experience. The ghost profile. The unfulfilled promise of activity. The grey profile picture of someone who one day decided they were done and slipped off into the night. And, of course, the greatest horror of all...

The unfinished book.

Sound familiar?

I hope so.

But this isn't a post about online platforms, either.

Flash forward instead to the rise of self-publishing. Here, we have a cultural revolution—a cultural revelation—that shook the publishing industry to its core. A new reality in which anyone could sell a book and become famous without bowing and scraping to the gods of traditional publishing, and the many gates they keep. A new breed of writer arose. These were the giants of self-publishing: the Romance writers churning out a book every six weeks. The Paranormal Erotica writers once sneered at in posh offices. The Sci-Fi serialists writing one universe for decades. The epic Fantasy denizens who were told their doorstoppers were too big for trad.

These are the success stories, we're told. The 1%. The lucky ones. The authors who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and laughed in the face of the industry that shunned them, then found the fame they deserved. And if they could do it, really, maybe anyone can.

But this isn't a post about self-publishing, either.

There's a common thread between these examples. If you haven't gathered it yet, I don't blame you: this post was titled the way it is for a reason, after all. There's something nobody talks about in the writing community, and it has to do with those fanfic authors, those unfinished books, and the 99% of published writers who don't get big, let alone the 99% who never get published at all. There's something nobody talks about in the writing community, and it's this:

The vast majority of people who take up writing aren't in it for the super-serious long haul.

And that's okay.

I've been involved in online writing communities for years now. My main one will be three years old this November: it started on the Wattpad forums (may they rest in peace) and made the leap to Discord when the forums closed. A year later, I noticed something while looking back over old Discord posts from those early days. In just a year, the regular, active membership of the community had turned over almost 100%. Old regulars had withdrawn, and new ones had replaced them. And yet, the community had grown. It thrived despite the turnover, so I shrugged and moved on with my day.