Writing Fanfiction Helps You Follow Your Passion

I personally find writing fanfiction to be the perfect remedy for beating burnout, because you can focus on your passions. Writing fanfiction requires the writer to engage with their fandoms and, therefore, likely sources of inspiration to reignite their love of the medium. If not for a love of writing itself, it can provide something valuable to anyone: an escape. 

Writing Fanfiction Lets You Experiment

Fanfiction is the ultimate sandbox medium because you enter with all the sand you could possibly want to play with. You can comfortably borrow the rules of a world, a character, or a trope to play around and see what works. 

This isn’t just about experimenting with content (though, seriously, who hasn’t reimagined the Star Trek heroes as werewolves meeting in a space coffeeshop?) One of my favorite fics of all time showed the life of a beloved character through the perspective of his sweater. Drabbles and vignettes offered tiny slices of life that could be combined to hint at without ever directly seeing the larger picture. It’s also about experimenting with form and perspective. If you want to play with a different genre or length of story, fanfiction is a fun place to find out if it works for you. 

For this reason, fanfiction isn’t just the place to write out fantasies for your favorite fictional world. It’s the place where you can play with fiction and, if it doesn’t work, you can just try again next week. 

You Can Develop Your Personal Style

Writing fanfiction can also teach you more about yourself as an author. You’ll be working with characters you already know with established personality traits. So how do you, as a writer, show this? What differentiates you from other fanfiction authors? The more relaxed you are, the more you’ll write. The more you write, the easier it will be to discover what comes naturally to you and what you might need to work on a little more. 

Maybe you’re a first person writer. Maybe you’re third. Maybe you favor singular points of view. Maybe you jump around. Maybe it varies based on the story. There’s a great way to find out.

You Can Use Fanfiction as a Practical Classroom

Writing fanfiction is, to a degree, an interactive activity. Most people write it and post it online, which means encountering an audience. This can be terrifying, but it’s also a great way to acclimate to feedback. What do people respond to in your writing? What earns reviews and what doesn’t? Over time, it can also teach you to differentiate between helpful and unhelpful feedback. 

It’s also a great way to learn what people respond to in your writing. Writer are their own worst enemies. We’re often hardest on ourselves. Maybe a reader won’t review. Maybe they won’t like the story. Or maybe, just maybe, they’ll think it was so much better than we imagined.

It’s Low Stakes & Low Pressure

I don’t mean to say there is no pressure involved in fanfiction. If you become heavily involved in the community, there can certainly be an expectation to produce certain content in a certain time frame by readers who might be no kinder to you than to a published author. But here’s the most magical thing:

You are the only person you have to write for. 

Fanfiction has no financial incentive, so there is nothing forcing you to write or continue with something you no longer love. There is nothing stopping you from branching out or trying something new, from getting experimental or indulging in a beloved trope or cliché. 

If you tire of a fandom or discover a new passion, there’s no requirement for you to stay. In the end, we’re all storytellers. Why not indulge in a storytelling medium for which the reward is, ultimately, the story you tell?

CM McGuire is a born-and-raised Texan, where she still lives near family and with her two cats (aka the needy terrors who prevent her from working at home).

CM started writing at a young age, much to the relief of her mother, whose ears needed a break from her nonstop stories. It was her passion for stories that led her to pursuing a major in history, minors in theater, and anthropology, and onto her current masters in Creative Writing. It also led her to her membership in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. 

The post #5onFri: Five Reasons for Writing Fanfiction appeared first on DIY MFA.

Whoa! That’s Big.

I know, right? Like the Oxford comma, sentence spacing is another hotly debated topic that has managed to hold supporters on both sides for decades. And with everyone from Smithsonian Magazine to your local newspaper reporting on this change, Microsoft is certainly feeling the heat from their decision.

To be fair, many style guides (e.g. AP, US Gov Printing) made this same declaration years ago. But AP doesn’t have a grammar checker used by an estimated 1 billion people worldwide. So, what urged one of the biggest word processing systems to make such a drastic decision? Well, frankly, it was about time.

Early Technology

The concept of a typewriter was first imagined way back in the 1700s by Englishman Henry Mill whose patent was for “an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another.” Over the next few centuries, advances in technology resulted in the standardization of the typewriter into the Underwood style of 1895. 

These typewriters used monospaced type. In a monospace typeface, each character occupies the same width on the page, which can be tricky to the eye. Therefore, to help readers clearly separate sentences in typed documents, two spaces were used after every sentence. 

Computer Processing

From the 1930s to the early 1980s, typewriters were used in high schools and grade schools across America to teach general typing skills. (Thus, why anyone in school during that era probably uses two spaces after sentences.) But with the first PC from IBM in 1981 and the first Microsoft Word program in 1983, typing went from a fun resumé filler to an absolute necessity. And it was during this time that variable-width fonts were finally introduced.

A variable-width font is one in which each letter is spaced and sized proportionally to the letters next to it. Most people find this style of type easier to read which is why the majority of fonts available and used today are variable-width fonts. The other advantage to a variable-width font is that sentences look more clearly defined, eliminating the need to place two spaces after terminal punctuation.

Hard Habits to Break

While two spaces after a period, question mark, or exclamation point may be unnecessary by today’s standards, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy habit to break. In fact, Microsoft’s Director of Program Management, Kirk Gregersen, recommends that those who disagree with the rule simply turn off that particular setting.

As an editor, I vastly prefer a single space, to the point that I complete a “find all” on any manuscript sent to me and replace all double-spaces with a single. But as with all editing, it’s a preference. The best way to “get it right” is to simply ask who you’re working with (i.e. an editor, agent, publisher, etc.) what their style guide prefers.

If you’re currently a double-spacer, it’s your choice—change your Word settings or change your typing habit. If you’re a single-spacer—congrats, your team scored a big win. At the end of the day, this editor is happy.

Jeanette the Writer is an editor, coach, and freelance writer who wants to help others demolish their editing fears and finish their manuscript. As a former scuba instructor turned entrepreneur, Jeanette knows about putting in the hard work to pursue your passions. She has worked with authors, speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs—empowering them with the right mindset, knowledge, and tools to help them tackle their editing goals. You can learn more about Jeanette by visiting JeanetteTheWriter.com.

The post Don’t Socially Distance Your Sentences with Two Spaces, Says Microsoft Word appeared first on DIY MFA.