einfach_mich | Feb. 24th, 2012

I see a lot of chatter on Twitter from fandom authors working on original fiction manuscripts. This news is awesome to me, but there is one trend among some of these authors that worries me. Many are posting pictures teases, play lists and even pinterest boards about their unpublished manuscripts.

Now, there is wrong with collecting pictures, making notes on character's quirks or even creating playlists for your stories. These things often keep writers on track and motivated them to write. They are great tools for a writer and could later serve to be fun little nuggets of information for readers, but to share this information before publication seems like a premature distraction, to me. Then I took a second to remind myself that many of these authors are from fandom.

It is common place, especially in the Twilight fan fiction fandom, for authors to share the writing process with others in a public forum. We tweet music, images and share teasers both before and while posting a fan fic. It's how we drum up buzz and reader excitement for our fan fiction, as well as keep ourselves motivated to write. There's a kind of positive feedback loop created between the writers and her readers/friends that many of us grown dependent on (though we may not have realized it) to keep us writing and working on a story.

While all of this if great for writing fan fiction, it kind of breaks down when you use the same practices for original stories. Why? Because the rest of use don't know your characters? We don't love them and aren't as motivated to know every little detail about them. That's not to say that your characters and books are not as good (or better than Stephenie Meyers, I'm sure many are), but it means we don't know them and won't have the same motivation to know things about them until we've actually read your book.

So while your tweets about a playlist for your Edward/Jasper fic may have got a ton of responses, you shouldn't expect a similar response for tweets about a playlist for your unpublished manuscript. Don't get pissed at your followers for "not being supportive." Take a deep breath (and reality check) and realize that people have a hard time getting excited about characters and stories they don't know. That may change after your work is published, but until then you should focus your energy on writing and leave the playlists and pictures till after your manuscript has been accepted by a publisher.

Of course if collecting these images and making playlists help you write, do it. I would just advise against expending too much time and energy on sharing it with the world before they have point of reference to inspire the appropriate amount of enthusiasm for what you're sharing. Someday you'll be big, not just in fandom and when that happens fangirls will clammer for every scrap of information you want to share about the story, characters and your writing process. So save it until then and focus on writing and editing.

Here's a motivational quote to lift any spirits that I may have pissed on.