Burnout and Jealousy: Fanfiction Edition

When I first started writing, I naively thought I'd never get burned out. Here I was at the height of the pandemic writing thousands of words a day. Nearly all of it was fanfiction, nothing I can really claim as my own, I guess, but I was homeschooled and had nothing to do but write. I remember that I started my Tumblr blog back in January of 2020. At the time, I was sixteen. Simultaneously, I was writing on Wattpad.

Now, I know what you must be thinking; Wattpad? Isn't that site for poorly written smut and home of those werewolf and vampire stories? The answer is yes but it's also where I began to write, where I went through what felt like hundreds of different writing styles until I found the one I liked best. In March of 2020, I had 77 followers, my writing hadn't exactly been good. I created the account four years before, I'd written for The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, The Mortal Instruments, and The Walking Dead. None of them had really taken off. My most popular fanfiction had eleven thousand reads but I hadn't been proud of it. The writing was too stiff, too bland. The characters never came off the way I wanted.

Back to where I was before. I deleted all of my fanfictions from Wattpad. I revamped my entire account in August of 2019 and then again in 2020. The best way to describe what I'm talking about now is 'vibes only'. The next fandom I started writing for, there were hardly any original character stories. Not in the 'modern' aesthetics current Wattpad users use. The next set of works is what 'made' me. I posted a short drabble in May of 2020 on my Tumblr then abandoned the account until late September. From March until August, I wrote a 50k word fanfic. I wouldn't finish editing it until December. I wrote the sequel in April 2021-September 2021. Something I'm most proud of is the story I named after Six the Musical. In less than one month, I wrote 24k words. Sure, it has awkward moments, parts where the writing isn't the best.

On Tumblr, I started getting requests. I began to write every. single. one. At the height of my Tumblr 'career', I was writing 1k words per fic. Most had gone over. I was posting daily. Multiple times a day. The notes, the asks, the praise, it was becoming addicting. It was something I relied on for happiness. For fulfillment. It was the same for Wattpad, truthfully. If my chapters weren't getting enough comments, it would leave me feeling empty. Depressed, even.

I think it had to do with my horrible, toxic, downright abusive living environment. If I wasn't getting enough interaction on my fanfictions, I felt like I failed. I was posting so often, writing things I didn't even like because I knew the fandom liked it because I knew that's what sold. It went on for months, this vicious cycle of spending every waking moment writing, plotting, and running my Wattpad and Tumblr. When I woke up in the morning, I'd check how many notes I got while I was asleep, I'd check my notifications. Before Tumblr updated their dashboard, it would show how many asks you received since the last time you checked it. That number was truly my source of happiness.

I was addicted.

And that's where the burnout comes in.

It was ten months of nonstop writing when I finally crashed. It was around the time I graduated high school and got my first job. My 1k+ word stories slowly trickled down to headcanons before they stopped coming altogether. On Wattpad, it's worse. I don't think I've posted a chapter since September.

My blog grew by one thousand followers in that span. In a depressive episode, I deleted it. I was aware of how obsessed I was with it, how heavily I relied on it. Gone.

(Spoiler: I created a new one!)

Now, we've reached the jealousy.

It's hard sometimes. In ten months, I gained 1200 followers. Yet, one of my mutuals gained double that in half that time. What were they doing that I wasn't? How was their writing so much better than mine even though I was putting so much time into it? All my energy, my time. It felt defeating.

How couldn't I be jealous when my stories never got to where my favorite authors did? Would mine ever reach one million reads? Would I ever get people who loved my stories the way I loved theirs? Would I ever get people who were unnaturally devoted to the characters I wrote, keeping track of everything I posted?

Would I be able to make something of my work? Could this be something I was proud of?

In the fandom I wrote for on my Tumblr, I was one of the first people consistently writing for it. I'd see people who followed me use my format, use my posts/plots, and my ideas for a fandom I'd been the one to truthfully write for it. I'd only seen two accounts in the tag before myself, only occasionally writing for it.

And I still see their posts have higher notes than my current fics.

At this point, I've distanced myself from my writing. I have a full-time job, friends, and hobbies that don't include writing. At the same time, I can't help but wonder; What am I doing wrong? Will I succeed? Will I ever be where twelve-year-old me hoped to be? Maybe this burnout will end or maybe I've just outgrown the fandom I've been writing for.

After all, I've written over 200k words for it. I spent month after month reading the books, reading fanfiction, and writing my own. Though, I think that being done with something I've dedicated all of this to is more terrifying than failing. How could I just drop it?

Maybe I'm jealous of the people who can just say they're done. Those that don't hyper-fixate on something so stupid. Jealousy and burnout is a real bitch.