What would you think if I told you I’ve written some 190,000 words in the past year or so? It’s a lot of words. For a person who has received almost no payout whatsoever for writing at all while also learning about the process and managing a small, internet-based following, that’s an enormous number of words. I know of food and culture writers who spend months heavily researching and drafting a paltry (I know it’s not!!! I really do!!!) five to six thousand words. There are people who work their asses off for a bare minimum to produce far fewer words than that for big publications. Still others have made bank off of a few hundred words here and there on social media sites, plugging some product they received a sponsorship from. That’s all to say that I’ve written 190k in less than a calendar year. I’ve done it for free, for the enjoyment of myself and others, and I’d do it all again if I weren’t burnt out to hell and back.
Not all of it is posted, mind you, and actually, that number doesn’t account for all I’ve written in the past year or so either. That number doesn’t account for the few essays I’ve written for myself, nor does it count anything I wrote for my Substack in 2020 and 2021. It doesn’t count ephemeral notes or anything written on paper. It’s not a complete figure, and that’s fine. Quantifying one’s work is always fruitless in the long run. The number of words written in a given time in not a complete barometer for success because those words can still fucking suck. Trust me, a lot of it does, which is why a solid 90k of that is unposted. But still, it’s a large number, and so much of it happened because I felt a blistering need to get something out of my head or my heart.
The compulsion to write that writers frequently speak of is fickle. It’s further complicated for people like me, who have their hearts in multiple places (between us, the ADHD doesn’t help either). Writers sometimes talk about their obsessive need to document things, or how they keep notebooks and write every single thing down. They talk about how it follows them through their entire lives, for better or for worse, and how such a habit has made them who they are today.
It’s strange hearing about this as a person who has worked through multiple phases of this sort of behavior. On the one hand, I do understand, and even relate to what they describe. On the other hand, because of how my brain works, I’ve been wildly inconsistent with regards to a compulsive need to write, hence the multiple phases throughout my life. With medication, this is something that’s actually improved, and I’ve gotten more regular with my writing habits. I’m happier with what I write now, and I’m writing more often. It just seems odd to me, however, to treat some sorts of writing as superior to others. It’s all driven by some sort of need to create, right? Why is some content privileged to the detriment of everything else? I’ve witnessed lifestyle bloggers get away with actual comma murder while talking about their charmed, unattainable lives; meanwhile, I’ve read truly special stories online that were produced for free on platforms devoid of ads. We take the lifestyle blogger more seriously than the free-to-read fiction writer. Because of that, I’m here, spiraling down the drain of my emotions, about to admit far more than I should about my hobbies.
Y’all, I’ve written a lot of fan fiction in the past year.
There’s no way in hell I would openly share what I’ve written with any of you. Absolutely not. If you get curious and do some digging, you miiiiight be able to find it, but I’m not about to give you direct links to the content. Never. I would genuinely rather die. It’s hard enough to admit that I’ve written it in the first place; it’s even harder to admit that I wore my heart on my sleeve for so much of it. I don’t really assume an alter-ego when I work on my projects, in the same way I never really adopted a personal brand when I first started writing here on Substack: it’s not something that comes easily to me.
It’s hard to be anyone but myself online. The chaos, the loneliness, the unbridled fascination with literally anything; all of these things are a part of my “brand” but they’re not easy to package for an audience. Even in the fan community, I’ve been hard to pin down; I have a penchant for heart-rending angst and I’ve got a reputation for unhinged chaos as well. I’m funny, and I’m sad, and sometimes I’m even a little angry. These things are all presented in the mainstream world as disparate, and yet in me they are one.
This worked in the fan community. My reputation is one of experimentation, and I hope, to some extent, freedom. I don’t like being hemmed in by rules or being told what makes good art. You can only say what good art is not, not what constitutes it in the first place. You know it when you see it, and I think fan fiction works that same way. You just have to be willing to wade through the truly prodigious amounts of trash to get to the treasure. I’ve seen all manner of grammar flubs and formatting issues, but a good story is still a good story.
I wouldn’t trade the time I’ve spent reading and writing in this community for anything. This does, however, yield some problems as a person who has now spent two years unemployed and wants to at least make crumbs in return for the bread given away. These two facets, the public-facing recluse and the anonymous, good-humored melancholic, are not generally seen as compatible.
To admit to producing written fan works is to commit something of a social suicide in non-fanfic writing communities. It bears mentioning that I don’t really think this is a bad thing??? Fan works are underground. They’re countercultural, and I think they should remain that way. More than ever, I think they have to remain that way to survive, in spite of the droves of writers on Tumblr genuinely begging for interaction to beat whatever slow, outdated algorithms are at play. We’ve lost sight of fan works as gifts for each other, given freely without the expectation of anything in return. When you introduce such content to the social media void, writers become content creators; craft goes out the window in favor of metrics and engagement. This is killing fandoms, and it creates toxic environments that frankly fucking suck on every level imaginable.
It goes without saying that this is a stressful space to work in creatively, and I’ve actually elected to step away from fan spaces that have algorithms for the time being. But that’s beside the point! The point is that these online fan environments are hidden from the public eye for various reasons, and that they bear significant amounts of stigma because of that. I’ve interacted with several dozens of other writers in this sphere, and I know of only one who is open with their work as a writer of fan fiction. It hasn’t been a career ender for her as a freelance writer, but her immense talent and ability to work fast has probably helped in that regard. She’s a force to be reckoned with. In contrast, I’m not.
This part of myself was always meant to be kept hidden, but because of my situation as a wayward writer without a beat and with few talents, I find myself at an impasse. My abilities have been honed by writing a lot and editing the writing of others at breakneck pace; I’m especially confident in my skills as an editor and proofreader (blinders for my own work notwithstanding). But that’s the problem: how do you pitch yourself as an editor to potential freelance clients when the vast majority of your experience is in communities that are strictly online and largely anonymous? How do you get a start in this work when you’ve got nothing you’re willing to publicly share as a part of a portfolio? What’s to be done when you can catch all the typos in someone else’s Google doc but look like an idiot in your own posts? These two parts of myself were always supposed to be separate. The thoroughly mediocre Substack essayist and the modestly successful fanfic writer are not supposed to be the same person, and yet they are. They’re both reclusive, they’re both open about emotions and experiences, and they’re both closed when it comes to sharing the face behind it all … yet one is considered legitimate, and the other farcical.
I have experience that has been valuable. I’ve worked hard, for free, for both myself and others and would do it again in a heartbeat. Because of this experience, however, I’m not taken seriously. After nearly thirty proposals for editing work on the freelance platform Upwork over the span of a month, I’ve had one legitimate contract (thank god it went well because otherwise I would have given up by now). That’s not to say that I couldn’t find work elsewhere but sliding into DMs seems unprofessional. I don’t even know how to fucking pitch an article to a publication of repute. I had to start somewhere and Upwork was the recommendation to at least get a start. Getting footing doing anything in these realms while living in the Midwest is a fucking pipe dream; if I lived in New York or California, I’d at least have the veneer of legitimacy. God forbid anyone hire a fat, white Midwestern woman to do anything when you can have any number of the conventionally attractive lifestyle writers write you a thousand words on how charming and lovely it is living in Corn Land, USA. Incomplete sentences never looked so cottagecore.
(This is to say nothing of the fact that I’m not I even have what it takes to write essays for big publications about food or culture or whatever it is people want to read at this point. I’m not a marketable person; humorous melancholy doesn’t really sell in the mainstream, my interests are actually too wide and varied, and I don’t really like being loud about shit anymore. It’s fucking exhausting. Content curators and head editors don’t want soft rage, they want towering anger that looks good on TikTok. That’s not me. That’s why I’d rather focus on editing for now.)
It remains to be seen whether or not I have some point left to make in my life as a penniless, unemployed millennial with few marketable skills. I can write, and that’s about it. I have written fan fiction (a lot of it, for better or for worse) that really touched some people and made them feel seen. How do I translate all of that over to something I can use to pitch myself for employment? How do I use the genuinely extensive experience I have beta-reading to make a meager but steady income proofreading and editing for literally anyone besides the sketchy, bot-generated cookbooks shouldn’t exist in the first place? I have taste, I have a brain, and I know how to use commas correctly. At the end of the day, I’m still doomed to irrelevance because I have no concrete way to back up the claims I make about myself.
The hustle doesn’t like this duality. It wants a brand. If I am to port myself over to freelance, it seems I have to make a choice: market myself with zero skills by leaving out the fan fiction and just eliding the fact that I’ve never been employed in the writing business, or keep the fan fiction and face the reality that I’ll never be taken seriously because I lack paid experience and took part in a controversial and subversive community. No one wants to hire that shit and I don’t blame them, there’s some weird shit out there, but it also means I can’t get a fucking foot in the door. I’m irrelevant in that I was never relevant to begin with. What’s a low-skill millennial to do?
I didn’t think I would return to this space any time soon. To be honest, this essay might be a one off and I’ll just disappear on y’all again. I do love fading away into my den only to emerge months later as if I’ve a bear leaving hibernation. The flip side is that it’s not really hibernation at all, it’s just pivoting to whatever tiny platform I feel like being on or writing for. I just want a space of my own that doesn’t feel shitty after a few months. I really don’t know what purpose this space has for me right now?? Much as I want to, I don’t actually have to have any of this shit figured out; this isn’t something I can just pull out of my ass overnight. Runaway success is a farce. Success is kind of a farce too, and when you’re emotionally in the weeds like I’ve been for *checks notes* nearly thirty years, it’s the little things that count. This is the most I’ve written in weeks, for example. Burn out is very real, but I can claim this essay as a small success, at least. Not bad for someone who came to a grinding hault for two months after writing some 190k in the span of eight.
Fancy meeting you here. It’s been A Time™️. I hope this essay finds your email inbox or browser well. I appreciate the hell out of you for taking the time to read this. I’m still trying to figure out what place writing has in my life as a person who wants to at the very least be taken seriously, so I’m grateful for your patience and the fact that you’ve not unsubbed on a whim. There’s so few of you but y’all mean the world to me. Thank you for reading, and maybe I’ll see you here again soon <3
PS: ummm, if you want to talk to me about editing your content, please don’t be afraid to do so. As I just laid out for you, I’m an absolute neophyte at doing paid work. The flip side is that I have a can-do attitude, scheduling flexibility, and a deep abiding passion for making sure the work of others looks good on a webpage. Seriously, I can look at anything; blog posts, websites and branding, long-form social media posts, whatever. I’m also like really cheap and I’m probably undervaluing myself, but what can I say? I’m a young millennial people-pleaser and would rather be underpaid than disappoint someone. It’s very on-brand. Come talk to me on Instagram or reply to this email if you want to talk to me about fixing your commas among myriad other things.