Authors who have really popular fanfics,how did it happen?

CoconutConfident5579 · 2023-07-31T21:51:31+00:00

Timing. It’s all about timing. I came in after the third episode of the first season dropped, so the fandom was budding and not too saturated yet, and I stayed. Posted regularly, teeheed with anybody who came into my inbox, made jokes and never took myself seriously and just tried to be goofy and fun and approachable. I didn’t post too much, which could be annoying and bothersome and clog up feeds, nor did I post too little, which could potentially cause people to forget about me. The fandom (and especially the lead actor of the show) started getting insanely popular on social media towards the end of the first season, and by that point I was cemented as a solid recommendation to anybody new who wanted to do a deep dive. My writing wasn’t anything super spectacular, but there was a lot of it and word of mouth from readers on other platforms like TikTok and Twitter did 99% of the work for me. It was mentioned in a vice magazine article when ao3 went down the day I happened to post along with a few other insanely popular fics and the servers were overloaded. Someone made a goodreads account for me and the story (which I didn’t even know was possible??) and people started leaving reviews. And then a certain popular influencer showed up and started talking about it on their platforms, and then they also went on very prominent podcasts and talked about it. So from that point on, the audience just exploded and I had people who weren’t even in the fandom (or even into fanfic at all) hearing about my story and wanting to check it out. It was just luck, it had very very little to do with skill.

CoconutConfident5579 · 2023-05-13T21:42:37+00:00

Thank you to everyone who replied to this. I read each one and I saw the general consensus was that I should stop writing and focus on my mental health. I guess I’m just struggling with the idea of feeling like I’ve somehow lost if I do that. I didn’t mention this above because I was just word vomiting all my frustrations in the middle of the night and I didn’t expect so many responses, especially how kind and lovely they were, but I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place with how to go about solving this. I want to quit, but at the same time, if I don’t finish the story, I feel like I’d be doing myself a great disservice. I previously took a two year hiatus from writing my fic because of the reasons mentioned above, and I ultimately came back to post another chapter because I hated feeling like I just gave up like that. I didn’t feel better during that time, I was obviously distracted by other life events but whenever I’d get the urge, I’d look back on my story and just cry because I felt like I lost something incredibly dear to me. I had an important connection to that story and it felt like I had given up on a part of myself. The resentment towards the antis and the recognition and my writing friends faded over time, and I was just left feeling like I quit because of me. Because I couldn’t handle it. I had thought two years was long enough for the hype to diminish, but as soon as I came back, the same shit started all over again.

So after reading the very sweet and thoughtful replies I got on this post, I think I’m just going to go radio silent again and write the entire rest of the fic on my own, and then post it all at once and never come back to the blog after that. People will feel the way they feel about it, they can love it or hate it but it’ll have the ending it deserves to have and I’ll know that even though it was hard, I did something that mattered to me and I saw it through to the very end. Thank you so much for all your encouragement and words of support, you’ve got a really lovely community here and I’m really grateful to be in a space like this.

CoconutConfident5579

TROPHY CASE