Adult fan-fiction

That came out wrong.

While writing Monday’s post, I realized that Substack was a lot like Tumblr in the sense that writers on here are basically grown up fan-fiction authors, but instead of One Direction, I’m writing about myself.

This is obviously more lucrative, unless you’re the girl who wrote After. I’d love to watch a Netflix documentary about the success anonymous FanFic writers from 2010-2020, but if I were a betting woman, I’d stick with my first point.

I tell people that I’m a writer in most circumstances, especially because I have some bylines with GQ from a few years ago that I’m hanging onto and more than 10 paid subscribers on here, which by my standards, is a lot. The circumstances in which I code switch back to a COPYwriter are when I don’t feel like lying (is it lying?) or am lacking the blind confidence of something like eyeliner to will me past the crippling feeling of being a pick-me.

So we just met, maybe at a birthday party of someone I went to college with or we’re on a first date. I’m wearing eyeliner but no mascara, a thing I’m doing now, and I tell you I’m a writer. You say woah, that’s really cool. What do you write?