Writing Problems

[sunkelles]

On one hand, writing is always better than not writing, and writing fanfiction is not inherently less valuable than writing our own original works. Fic will always hold a dear place in my heart and every single fic I have ever written is important to me both as a person and as a developing writer. If I didn't start writing fic back in high school, I doubt if I would even be a writer now. I definitely wouldn't be as good at it as I am now. Sometimes when I write fic nowadays though, I feel bad because I WANT to write more of my original stuff and I keep not doing that in order to chase my newest fic ambition. I technically completed nano, but I only wrote 20k of original stuff and then 30k of fic. On one hand, writing 20k of that novel idea is a huge accomplishment and I might not have actually been able to stay focused on writing that much for that long if I couldn't write some fic to blow off other creative energies, but on the other hand, if I hadn't gotten distracted by fic I might have been able to write the whole 50k OF my nano project and really finished that first draft.

I HAVE cool ideas. I want to bring them into the world and I want to someday be published, but I keep coming back and writing more and more and more fic and barely devoting any time to my own works and my own ideas.

On one hand, I think that this feeling of guilt for dedicating time to a hobby is because of the capitalist drive to go go go and that any work that cannot be monetized is inherently worthless, but I'm also a little bit terrified that if I keep going back to fic and writing almost nothing BUT fic I'll never pursue writing my own ideas and leave my own mark, you know?

I don't know. I guess I'm just afraid that if I don't get to writing more of my own original works now in college when I have some time I'm afraid that