{"id":95758,"date":"2016-06-22T22:39:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T22:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/22\/write-your-story\/"},"modified":"2016-06-22T22:39:44","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T22:39:44","slug":"write-your-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/22\/write-your-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Write Your Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

eeyore9990<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3. <\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the big bosses (I didn\u2019t even realize there WERE big bosses in Minecraft but that\u2019s beside the point). He wrote three chapters with a little input from me \u2013 his first beta \u2013 and y’all?<\/p>\n

He was fucking excited. To be writing a story.<\/p>\n

Today he came home from school and seemed a little down, so I asked him about it only to find out that some little asshole at his school told him, \u201cThere is already a Minecraft story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: Okay? So what?<\/p>\n

Lucifer: If there\u2019s already a story, no one will read mine.<\/p>\n

Immediately, I dragged him in and pulled up my AO3 account. My boys know I write fanfiction, so I showed him my account and how many subscribers I have. Then I showed him how many Teen Wolf stories there are. And then, because it seemed like the perfect analogy, I said, \u201cWhat if I wrote a story where two characters meet in a coffee shop and fall in love? No werewolves, nothing at all to do with the actual Teen Wolf universe. Just Stiles and Derek meet in a coffeeshop and fall in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed.<\/p>\n

I showed him Mornings Aren\u2019t For Everyone<\/a>. Showed him how many hits it had, how many kudos, how many lovely comments.<\/p>\n

Then I said, \u201cSo do you think, if anyone else wrote a story about those exact same characters meeting in a coffee shop and falling in love\u2026 would anyone read it?\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed and said, \u201cNo because you already did.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I clicked on the Sterek tag and refined to coffee shop AU. His mind was blown to see that they ALL had thousands of hits and kudos and comments. Then I clicked on JUST the coffee shop AU tag and showed him all the fics across all the fandoms written by countless different people.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to tell you all now what I told him because it applies to everyone.<\/p>\n

Write your story. It doesn\u2019t matter that someone else has written a story about that subject. They didn\u2019t write YOUR story. Only you can do that.<\/b><\/p>\n

And I want to read your <\/i>story.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

eeyore9990: I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3. Why? He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Write Your Story”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[247,12030,4,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}