This is... unfortunate and wrong. @erinbowbooks and I both came up through fan fiction. We would not be here (or, in fact, married) were it not for that outlet that allowed us to try out our writing in front of a friendly audience of strangers. https://twitter.com/benedict_rs/status/1349954211358924800

Unfortunately, it's too easy for "professionals" to disparage fan fiction. Quite often, they do so by assuming that what little they've seen provides the standard by which all fan fic should be measured. I said this 11 years ago: https://bowjamesbow.ca/2010/05/07/in-defence-of-f.shtml

But there are as many reasons to write fan fiction as there are fan fiction writers. Some write to test themselves and get feedback; others just like to explore in a fictional universe that gives them pleasure. Whatever the case, their activities are as personal as they are valid

And, full disclosure, yeah, @erinbowbooks and I both met through Doctor Who fan fiction. I was a urban planning student at Waterloo and she was an aspiring particle physicist interning at CERN in Switzerland.

I wrote a Doctor Who fan fiction story that played with Irish faerie tropes and uploaded it to alt.drwho.creative. She read it on her newsfeed and e-mailed me. We corresponded for a couple of years before we realized we were in love.

Four years later, we were married. It's been a wild ride since, but that seed of fan fiction made us both professional writers, not just in YA, SF and fantasy, but for education and communications. And I've seen many colleagues come up through the ranks.

May I plug @scifrey for her works of fiction and her pieces on fandom. The point is, people who deride fan fiction are likely, without knowing it, deriding many of their professional colleagues, not to mention lots and lots of people who just want to have fun.