Fan Fiction's Positive Affect on My Writing

This article Why Heather Can Write quite frankly was fantastic. I actually read it twice. A lot of the things really hit home for me and allowed me to reflect on my writing in a way that would never have occurred to me otherwise.

What difference will it make, over time, if a growing percentage of young writers begin publishing and getting feedback on their work while they are still in high school? And what happens when those young writers compare notes, becoming critics, editors, and mentors? Will they develop their craft more quickly-and develop a critical vocabulary for thinking about storytelling?

I know for a fact that writing fan fiction has definitely enhanced my writing capabilities. Sure, we did writing in high school; I had to do the term papers and whatnot, but I rarely got the opportunity to write fiction and when I did, I completely ate it up (and not to brag, wowed my teachers). Even at my college there is no creative writing course. I got a bit of creative writing when I took a short story class a couple of years ago, but not a lot. The writing instruction at my high school in general was simply: Write this, not: This is how you write. Rarely got grammar instruction either after elementary school (which would explain my occasional problems with grammar). But it was in writing fan fiction that I got my best chances to really focus on developing my writing skills and I applied what I learned there to not only my fan fiction writing, but my school writing as well, not the other way around. And again, to go back to betas, they can teach you about some aspects of grammar and other aspects of writing that your own education may have missed. Overall, my grammar might be messed up sometimes, but any improvements I have made on it have been through writing fan fiction.