I think I may have mentioned this on one of my introductory posts, but I do have a spot in my heart for fanfiction. It originated as an utmost passion for anime in general. In my supposed senior year (turns out I still have to do one more course to graduate, /ugh) I was the president of my University's anime club. It was a fun experience, but it totally burned me out on all things anime, and now I'm settled down to simply attending conventions, following one or two series, and reading/writing fanfiction.
For me, writing fanfiction is really a form of release, a temporary escape from WoW, and a reminder that I do have other hobbies and passions other than WoW itself. This was especially so when I was levelling up. Don't get me wrong, I love levelling up, but there are points where i'm not always in the game (server downtime, my job), and I use those opportunities to enjoy writing fanfiction.
In a way, fanfiction is much like writing your own blog. For any particular story that you're writing, especially those long stories that involve multiple chapters. Whenever I post a new chapter to fanfiction.net, there is always an readership waiting for the next part of the story coming along. To put this into perspective, out of the 150 thousand Naruto fanfics out there, one might approximate that to being maybe 50 to 60 thousand different authors. That's just authors, and not including the anonymous readers on the internet who don't have their own ffnet account. When you post a continous story, any number of this relatively small, but fanservice-crazy community will end up reading what you post, and even subscribe to it.
As an author, you can even view the exact list of people who have opted to follow your story as you post it. And for this one particular story, I'm only on the fifth chapter, and I'm already past 20 subscribers. I'm quite pleased with my work, as it has generated that sort of response. It's not digg-worthy, but people appreciate and wait patiently for me to put up a new chapter.
It's not that easy. Not at all.
With subscriptions, there's this sort of pressure to deliver content that is continuous with the content that you have already posted. Compared to blogging, you're restricted in that way. Doing FitNB is really great, since I can pretty much write about what I want, but with fanfiction, it's MUCH easier to get into writer's block, and to an extent, becoming burnt out from posting once a week, for consecutive weeks. That's where I am with the story I'm doing, and it's been a few weeks since I last posted.
Oh yeah, I started FitNB a few weeks ago. Coincidence? I think not!
Blogging has become my alternative unwinding source as compared to fanfiction, especially during times of writer's block and burnout, but it seems that the itch to fanfic is coming back, so here's hoping that I can balance the two. /cheers!
Posts
