The Love of Fan Fiction

So I've been thinking a lot in these last couple of weeks, which really does me no good in the end. I've read quite a few articles on the subject of fan fiction and what it's like to be a real author and a fan fiction writer at the same time. The general consensus of it all is that publisher author's do not write fan fiction. It destroy's your validity. Entirely. Which this I find both interesting and sad.

When I was in college I wrote so much original fiction it hurt. Updating my fan fictions never happened because I was engrossed in my original concepts and working on them even in my dreams. But now, now I can't think of anything that isn't someone else's story to begin with. And that is SO upsetting.

My dream since the beginning of time has always been to be an author. A published, adored, maybe even hated a little, author. I want to have a book with my name on it in Barnes and Nobles. I want teenagers to read the words that I've written and know that I've been there too.

So I guess I have to clean up and cut ties. I don't know. My goal isn't to just delete all of my fan fictions, believe me there. But I'm going to distance them from myself. That's for sure. Maybe I'll finish them, maybe I'll just... I don't know. I really don't know. I love those stories like their my babies but they're not going to go anywhere. THEY ARE GOING TO GO NOWHERE.

So what's the point of them? To make people on the internet happy? When did I start getting paid for that? Age old motto: Don't do anything you're good at for free.

Maybe I'm cocky here in this sentence but I think I'm good at writing. So maybe I should stop doing fan fiction, stop doing it for free. Maybe I should just say fuck it and do what I want? Maybe I should just curl up in a ball and sleep. I don't know. All good choices. All points of validity. All washing through my head trying to figure out what to do.