What are you willing to sacrifice? 🤔
I ended my podcast at the start of 2018.
I ran The Vacant Lot, a podcast dedicated to the cartoon Hey Arnold!, as a culmination of years of love for the series, spanning the course of 18 months and 20 episodes.
When I posted my farewell episode in January, I didn’t feel sadness for concluding the podcast. Rather, I felt relief. I spent the greater part of my childhood and a good portion of my adulthood obsessed with the show. I trawled fan forums, drew fanart, published fanfiction, paid artists for Hey Arnold! commissions. It was no great exaggeration to call me a Hey Arnold! superfan.
So when Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie aired in November 2017, I felt there was no need to continue my crusade on the show. It was time to move on.
Or so I thought.
For much of 2018, I came to the revelation that I wanted to take my writing seriously. I let my podcast page lapse in favour of a new branding page repositioning myself as a content creator of the written form. I contributed to Medium and began guest-posting on different writing-centric sites. I even wrote my first manuscript.
I was prepared to take my hobby into a new professional, marketing direction. In fact, NaNoWriMo 2018 would be all about me doing a major rewrite of my YA novel idea.
Or so I thought.
In the days leading up to Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie (henceforth referred to as TJM), I took it upon myself last year to write as many fanfics about Hey Arnold! as possible, figuring that what transpired in the movie would potentially change canon forever. It did…kinda.
At the end of TJM — spoiler alert — Arnold and Helga kiss, and the longstanding Shortaki ship officially became canon. Most fans who were writing fanfic had already established this as a done deal so not much had changed except that writers would have to elaborate if their stories took place before TJM, or if their fic existed in an alternate universe (AU) where the events of TJM never took place.
I started two stories and left them unfinished last year. Also, I was surprised that I had one more story idea inspired by TJM.
Thus, instead of devoting my 30 days to my novel, I finished my efforts from 2017, as well as completed Have Your Cake, a proof of concept of what a post-TJM season of Hey Arnold! could potentially look like.
It is now December, and I am still basking in the afterglow of my fanfic purge. Over 35,000 words later (more than the rough draft of my manuscript!), I feel I can finally walk away from the series.
After over twenty years, the thought of leaving behind the show that gave me my passion for writing is not sad. It’s not even bittersweet. It’s just…relief.
There lies some tragedy here. I gave my all for so many years to stories that I can never share beyond the confines of my computer screen. Because of the risk of copyright, I can never publish them; because of fear of accusations of plagiarism, creators of properties that fanfics feed can technically never read them.
I used to be alright with this, content with my stories being shared amongst likeminded fans and gaining notoriety among the community, however small and insular it may be.
But two things have changed. Not only have I tasted pure, original creativity and liked it, but I also began to resent writing for the community to which I’ve spent DECADES giving my stories.
The most popular fanfics in Hey Arnold! — nay, in 99.9% of ALL fandoms — are romance, and I never catered to that audience. It also feels less and less fulfilling to invest all this time in the fandom to only get a pat response of “Good” or “Great story” or “You should write more about Arnold and Helga.”
But it’s not the fandom’s fault. I shouldn’t expect more from my audience. I need to expect more of myself.
I need to stop hiding behind someone else’s intellectual property.
I need to stop restricting the size of my audience that may actually be interested in what I have to write, if only it weren’t fanfiction.
I need to devote my time to stories that I wouldn’t be ashamed to talk about if I’m asked in conversation “So, what are you writing about?”
That is why I need to leave behind my fandom.
I’m grateful for the leg-up it has given me to hone my craft. But if I truly want to elevate my writing to a place where I could be proud to see it on a bookshelf, then it’s time to get serious with what I’m trying to achieve.
2018 is officially the end of Sylvie the Hey Arnold! Fan.
2019 is the start of Sylvie the Writer.
What about you? What do you hope to leave behind in 2018 for a fresh start in 2019?
