I don't write fanfiction anymore, but it's where I got my start as a writer.

I started writing fanfiction in middle school for just myself. I'd be watching a show or movie and think to myself, "Hm, I wonder what they'd do if this happened?" I had so many of those "what if" thoughts in my head, I started writing them down on paper.

I wrote pages upon pages of fanfiction just for myself. Often, I wouldn't even read them after I wrote them. I just wanted to get them out of my head. I'd write them down, often not even to completion, and then put them in a drawer and forget about them. If I really hated them, I tore them up into little pieces and threw them in my trash can.

I started writing fanfiction at school during lunch or when I finished my work early in the class. Eventually, my friends started to notice. They'd ask to read my writing, and for a while, I always said no. My writing was (and still is) very personal to me, and I didn't want to let other people read it because I knew they wouldn't see my work the same way I did.

Eventually, I caved. I let a couple close friends read my writing first, and they loved it. Some of them begged me to write more, or if I hadn't worked on a particular piece in a while, they would beg me to work on it again because they wanted to know what was going to happen next.

It was the first time I was really validated as a writer.

I started keeping all of my fanfiction in one big binder, and I used tabs and labels to identify them. I wrote my friends' names on the side of the pages to mark where they stopped reading so they could pick up next time where they left off.

Recently, I found one of my binders from middle school. It was full of pages of fanfiction, and there were names scribbled all over the edges of the pages. I was amazed at how many people wanted to read my work.

Looking back on my fanfiction, I am proud of how far I've come.

I used to be really embarrassed by my fanfiction. One day in middle school, a guy in class tried to take my binder because he knew I kept my writing in it, and I actually ran across the classroom from where I'd been answering a question on the whiteboard, so I could snatch it out of his hands.

Without fanfiction, I wouldn't be the writer I am today. Writing fanfiction gave me the freedom to let my imagination run wild. I learned to listen to the characters. Since I knew the shows and movies, I knew the characters, so I could look at something I'd written and recognized that there was no way they would say or do certain things. I learned to write diverse plots and give my characters conflicts to overcome.

Everything I know today, I learned from writing fanfiction.

Next time you see fanfiction online and roll your eyes, know that the person who is writing that is exploring a love they have for writing and a love they have for their characters. Is some of it cringe-worthy? Oh, 100%. But being a cringe-y writer is how we learn and how we grow.