One Fanfiction-Less Year

I'm sure the title of this particular blog post has drawn in most of my old readers.

June 15th is a date that I will remember for all time, just like I'll hold the date January 3rd dear to my heart for the rest of my life; both these dates are significant to the writer in me.

Though January 3rd of 2014 was the day that I initially started writing (Love at Mission Creek Mall), June 15th is a significant day as well. On this day last year, I made the harrowing decision to quit writing fanfiction, and I've gone back and forth on the matter since that day.

Fanfiction brought out an undiscovered love of writing that I would have never known was there if not for my obsession with the show, Lab Rats. Since then, I've written over 20 fanfictions on Wattpad and much more that will most likely never see the light of day. Making that one choice to stop doing something that I'd loved for so long was a very painful decision, as most of you probably knew; but I had been fighting with myself over it since early in 2015. Writing back then had become one of the most strenuous things that I had ever taken on, and until the middle of 2016, I didn't know what the problem was.

The second I started writing the fiction version of The Buddies Rule, my real problem came to light. Though there will always be times of writer's block cropping up throughout my writing career, writing fanfiction had become nearly unbearable, and that kind of thing had never happened to me before. But as I looked over the facts (figuratively, of course, this wasn't a serious investigation), I realized my main muse that I had clung onto for so long had lost its luster in my eyes - Lab Rats had become boring to me, which was why I could no longer write for it.

This news hit me harder than anything had in the past, and though I had seen many of my fellow Lab Rats writers going through about the same thing in the past (getting caught up with school and life, along with losing your need to watch this show), I was surprised that it had actually happened to me. I had been in love with the show since the day I started watching it, and now I was just over it? I wasn't taking this lying down (ha, ha - I think I was lying down).

So what did I do? I kept writing fanfiction for as long as I possibly could. I stretched out my timeline farther than I ever intended to - namely because I was scared to move on. I had posted an original story about two months after posting my first few fanfictions in 2014, and it hadn't gone over well at all. Though there were no directly bad reviews, the thing that got to me was the fact that there were no reviews at all. So I made sure to write for Lab Rats and any other Disney Channel show for as long as I could, only for me to burn out around the start of 2016. I'm sure most of my dedicated following noticed how much I was dropping the ball. Coming from the girl that used to update each of her books twice a day, it was hard to see myself only updating one book once a month. But that's what it had come to.

As an experiment, I announced my plans to rewrite The Buddies Rule back in August of 2015 (though it could have been 2014 for all I know), and the idea went over swimmingly. This gave me enough confidence to post a sneak peek of the book in February of 2016, and the chapters took off like crazy. I set the date for the official posting in May, and I couldn't have been more excited. Though with the growing excitement that I had for the upcoming original version of TBR, came the startling reality that my fanfiction days were dwindling. I couldn't do it anymore, I didn't even have it in me to finish off the last of my books. So what was next? Do I continue to force myself to write these remaining fanfictions just to satisfy my readers? Or do I finally come clean with my struggle, and hope everyone takes it well.

I, of course, opted for the second option, and I got as much love as possible from my readers.

Though my fan-base died after I announced my departure from fanfiction in June of last year, I haven't been happier to try and rebuild it. I have managed to salvage a small portion of my beloved fanfiction readers, namely because I insist on reworking my older stories, it's been an honor to find new readers and friends outside of my fanfiction stories. I've since written and posted four original books to Wattpad, and an even greater feat is that I won the Current's Epilogue Contest for Tessa Lovatt's Watty's 2015 winner.

So to say that this last fanfiction-less year hasn't been the same would be an understatement, and despite the fear that I get any time that I post a new original chapter or story, I fight through it, because fanfiction taught me to do just that. If I had the courage to post a fanfiction late one night in 2014 with no following whatsoever, then I can do anything. I really didn't intend for this post to turn all motivational, but apparently, that's what original fiction has brought out in me. I love my fans for sticking with me through whatever life takes me through, and I love my fanfiction readers even more for taking a chance on me.

But don't walk away from this post thinking that I've stopped writing fanfiction completely; fanfiction is like a drug, there are serious withdrawal symptoms that I still go through every day. I still get random fanfiction ideas popping into my head from time to time, and every once in a while, I even write them down. Quitting publicly was the hardest part, now I just have to find a way to transfer all my fanfiction related thought into original ones... I know all you converted fanfiction writers out there feel just the same.

If you guys like the post, heart it by clicking the button below, and leave a comment telling me what you think! If you'd like to see more posts like this, let me know by telling me below or contact me on one of my social media profiles!