Techbros: no one actually likes writing

Median AO3 account holder: Sorry fam, chapter 179 was delayed by 22 minutes because my leg got stuck in a bear trap

For the past few weeks, general life-in-the-present-moment anxiety piled up with new circumstances, like a heat wave that made it hard to sleep and harder to go out and do anything, and I started managing by writing. The written word was one of my primary work products over the past decade, since being a scientist requires publishing papers and teaching university students through COVID required copious lecture notes. The topics of textbook-shaped writing are largely set by the curriculum and the social contract behind it, and papers tend to be joint projects that need agreement among coauthors. For relaxation purposes, I turned to the medium where idiosyncrasies can fly their freak flag high: fanfiction.

The emotional appeals of fanfic are varied. It can be an opportunity to simply spend more time with characters that one likes. It can be a way to slip the bounds of Standards & Practices and take those characters in a heterodox direction. Perhaps most nobly of all, it can be a way to make Person Of Interest incredibly gay and thereby spite Jim Caviezel.

It’s not how I started writing. Both my parents tried their hands at novels, so I grew up with the idea of that as a way to have fun being just part of the accepted background. I was a voracious reader of books, so eventually at least trying to make one of my own was nigh inevitable. During my childhood Ancient Egypt phase, I coasted naturally from drawing maps of imaginary pyramids to inventing stories about people exploring them. From my reading, I soaked up the conventions of pulp mysteries—plant the clues, deliver the payoff when your detective gives the summation—and with plenty of false starts I went about implementing them. By the time I was in seventh grade or so, I’d attempted a science-fiction novel of my own, in which I tried to do just about every era and style of SF because I didn’t know there were differences between them. I started an SF murder mystery in college and finished it a few years later.

With that as the direction I’m coming from, another appealing aspect of fanfic resonated with me: You can skip whatever you don’t feel like writing. Having a hard time describing character voices or appearances or mannerisms? Coast on the source material! Not sure how to build romantic chemistry? Use an established relationship! Or take a pairing that the fandom has already read in a romantic way and just have those characters do things together! Intimidated by the scope and scale of a whole novel? Try a drabble of a hundred words or a vignette of a thousand. It’s not about being lazy, since you can still put in so much effort it boggles your loved ones; it’s about removing obstacles from your own path and enjoying the aspects of writing that you enjoy most. And, if you like, it can be practice for challenging yourself to do the things that you hadn’t believed you could pull off.

Making a hobby of it in the present circumstances, moreover, has that certain cachet of Old Internet feelings. Sure, go ahead and write something willfully abstruse, something designed to have no audience. Daria and Jane find each other in the world of Naked Lunch, as told through a pastiche of Howl. Why not? Or, screw it, this is just how my brain works now, Jane is a back-alley prosthetic customizer in the world of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Daria is her asexual trans girlfriend living in a stolen prosthetic body. How about a sequel to the 2022 Hellraiser remake where the villain is a tradwife influencer? Or trans guy Sherlock Holmes, or slice-of-Starfleet-life science fluff? Go for it. Do the things that you don’t figure anyone will like. If even one person does, you’ll have beaten your expectations.

(Expanded thoughts provoked by seeing this fedi post of mine getting a little renewed attention.)