I think "getting it (the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly XD) out of your system" is just a large part of growing up as a writer.
Very true. I think every author has that "must get out of system!" story. I do know there are those authors who only ever had one story to tell, and wrote nothing else once they told it.
I used to feel guilty about devoting so much time to fanfic and practically no time to original fic. Right up until I realized that I was in dire need of improvement. I'm terrible at whipping up original short stories, which is how most authors get their practice in, so wasn't writing as much as I needed to in order to improve. Then came fanfiction and I was writing like crazy. Now I look back on finding fanfic with nothing but gratitude. (However, I should confess that I do kind of, sort of regret the reading aspect of fanfic. Not majorly or anything since there's so much great stuff to read, but there are quite a few stories that I regret running into - some my fault, some that came at me out of the blue, but that squicked me in ways that took me forever to get over).
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chiming
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Date: 2011-11-12 05:10 am (UTC)From:Very true. I think every author has that "must get out of system!" story. I do know there are those authors who only ever had one story to tell, and wrote nothing else once they told it.
I used to feel guilty about devoting so much time to fanfic and practically no time to original fic. Right up until I realized that I was in dire need of improvement. I'm terrible at whipping up original short stories, which is how most authors get their practice in, so wasn't writing as much as I needed to in order to improve. Then came fanfiction and I was writing like crazy. Now I look back on finding fanfic with nothing but gratitude. (However, I should confess that I do kind of, sort of regret the reading aspect of fanfic. Not majorly or anything since there's so much great stuff to read, but there are quite a few stories that I regret running into - some my fault, some that came at me out of the blue, but that squicked me in ways that took me forever to get over).