At my big age, I’ve recently become obsessed with fanfic. There’s no question that I’ve read more fanfic than books this year, and I don’t regret it. I’ve even started writing some of my own lately, which has been its own journey.

After a lifetime of thinking and writing about stories roughly every waking moment, I was surprised to find that reading fanfic shifted my relationship to storytelling more broadly.

I’m picky with the books I pick up. I have a long list of subgenres, styles, and plot hooks that I gravitate towards—or avoid.

Fanfiction, though, doesn’t feel like a big commitment, even when the word count is the same. It’s dangerously easy to scroll through hundreds of thousands of words about your favourite characters.

That means that I’ve tried fanfic that I never would have in book form, whether because of the tropes used or the writing style.

In these experiments, I’ve stumbled on some of the most moving and memorable stories I’ve ever read, regardless of format. I’ve become a new fan of tropes I had no interest in before. (Amnesia romance? Yes, please!)

Language is an imperfect medium through which we try to convey our thoughts to someone else’s mind. Something is always lost or transformed along the way. But there’s so much joy in the attempt, especially in fanfic, where the people on either side of that exchange share the same excitement and investment in the characters.

I hope I can carry that sense of play and discovery into my book-reading life as well.