Last night, as I was in bed and about to fall asleep, I had an epiphany. It just happened. I’d been searching for the answer for years and years, but all of a sudden, it just happened.
I started to write fanfiction when I was about 14 years old. It was the first time I ever wrote a story. If I remember correctly I started writing fanfiction before I did poems (for my crush at school, we all had that phase, right? Or it’s probably just me). Maybe, I did both at the same time. It was a long time ago.
I wrote about 20 stories in total, but after highschool, I stopped writing completely. My entire focus shifted to college. I started to write again in 2017, but I only created original works. Since then I have written almost 20 stories. I’d never written fanfiction again until last December when I wrote TGCF fanfiction, which I mention in my last entry.
I’ve been serious about my novels since around 2020. I focused so much on the sales. I mostly wrote cliche stuff that I imagined would sell. And that was how things went wrong. I was so fixated on the number of views and sales because I didn’t really care about the real values those stories gave me.
I love Stephen King’s works so much, and I remember that he wrote in his book On writing that you should never write to sell and you should only write what you love. I never truly understood what he meant until last night.
Yesterday, I translated my TGCF fanfiction into English and posted the first chapter on Ao3. People found my work and read it. Some even gave me likes (they call it kudo) and commented on it. The number of likes and comments wasn’t a lot compared to what I have received from my Thai readers, but my happiness went through the roof.
I had no expectations. I just wrote what I wanted to. I really love TGCF and wanted to write a post-cannon fanfiction. So, I did it, and that made me happy. It’s just as simple as that. How did I not figure this out sooner? Funny, I traveled in a full circle and came back to where I had started.
When you write for the sales, you lose yourself in the process and you forget the purpose of your writing. However, if you focus on writing what you love, you will be content whenever you write. Life is simpler than you think.
Gratitude journal day 5: Today, I’m so grateful that I found what I love.
–Petra
Petrawrites.com 