maskedfangirl:

I keep hearing and reading this sentiment. Everyone I know in person who’s gotten into Sherlock fandom at all has expressed some variation of it. I lurked for months because I felt the same way.

(I still do. Every time I post something to this fandom, I physically duck and cover for a second after hitting the Publish button just in case, I dunno, my computer explodes from the sheer amount of rejection that volleys back at me.)

Anyway, I read the “not good enough for this fandom” sentiment again this morning, and it reminded me of something that happened at WisCon last year. WisCon, for those who haven’t heard of it, is a Midwest feminist sci-fi convention. It’s a very critique-y con, where a typical panel goes, “Here’s a thing we love! Let’s pick apart where it succeeds and fails as a feminist text and learn from it as writers! Squee!” It’s a fantastic convention. But if you don’t have a PhD in space operas, it can be really intimidating sometimes.

Last year at WisCon, I attended a panel about Imposter Syndrome. The first half of the panel was panelists sharing their own thoughts and experiences about it, but for the second half, they said, “Please come up to the mic and share an experience where you felt inadequate. People listening, if you’ve ever felt that way, too, raise your hands.” 

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Oh, this. Such a wonderful post. There are days when I sit and glare and my notebooks and computer screen and mutter darkly about my lack of description or my plot not making any sense and the fact that I will never, ever be as good as x fic-writer or y published author (usually Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman). I leave myself angry notes at the edges of my fic saying stuff like ‘THIS IS TRIPE’ and ‘DON’T POST THIS EVERYONE WILL HATE IT’ or ‘YOU JUST HIDE UNDER GIMMICKS AND THEY ALL KNOW’.

Then I have to tell myself to get over it and just post it and if no-one likes it or if I don’t like it then well, you know what, it’s a learning curve. Sharpen your pencils, get a cup of tea, and start again.

Don’t let fear or feelings of inadequacy get in the way of doing something that you really want to do. I did, for a very long time, and those years I went without practising writing because ‘I’ll never be as good as x, y, z’ stopped me from learning and developing.

There’s room for everyone in fandom. There really, really is.