thorny thoughts

[swan_tower]

There's a lengthy entry up by one cupidsbow discussing fanfic in the context of Joanna Russ' How to Supress Women's Writing. I spent a good fifteen minutes attempting to write a comment in response to somebody over there, but I've decided I'm better off doing so over here; the thought I'm trying to articulate is thorny and awkward, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to phrase it, and if I try to do so over there, odds are I'll just piss multiple people off and find myself at the bottom of a verbal dogpile I didn't mean to start. So I'll chew on my thought over here, and see what I can get out of it. Warning; what follows is rambling and unfocused, and not entirely thought-out.

The proximate comment that set me off is: And, of course, if you're a really good fanfiction writer, you're encouraged to write original fic - and this is seen as a step up, despite the fact that a lot of fanfiction written by experienced writers is better than published writing. But it also is colliding somewhere in the back of my head with: But what I'm wondering is if I've been encultured to think that my fun isn't worth being paid for. See, men write stuff they want to read and get paid for it. Why is my work less valuable?

buymeaclue has already made the obvious response to that latter one, so I don't need to. Instead, let's start chewing on the thoughts in my head.

I've seen several comments recently in various places on the topic of encouraging fanfic writers to turn their hands to original fiction. All of those comments (which are by fanficcers) have been negative. And I'm increasingly feeling like there's a hostile backlash happening within the fanfic community against this very suggestion.

I can understand where that would come from: if you run into people who think the worst of paid original fiction is inherently superior to the best of unpaid derivative fanfiction (I'm using "derivative" in the technical sense, not as a value judgment), then yeah, you're going to be pissed off by the continual suggestions that you'd be much better off spending your time and effort on something worthwhile.

But for the love of little fishes, people -- not everybody encouraging you to write non-derivative fiction is doing so because they think fanfic sucks. In fact, sometimes they're noticing that it doesn't suck, and encouraging you to bring the cool things that are happening over in that sandbox into this one. Because, as cupidsbow notes in that post, there are a lot of ways in which the institutional factors of fanfic contribute to its marginalization and suppression (and with it, the marginalization and suppression of those largely female voices) -- so I think it's helpful to bring some of the innovation of the marginalized community into the non-marginalized one. It'll liven up the textual discussion over here, and draw eyes toward what's going on over there, instead of leaving it in a ghetto the rest of the world tries to ignore.

There's thornier stuff still in my head, though. Like the ways in which some of the fanfic community seems to want to do backflips in order to avoid noticing the fact that what they're doing is illegal. We can have arguments about the problems with our copyright laws until the cows come home -- I'd be the first to point out some of those problems -- and yes, some authors give it a tacit or implicit thumbs-up anyway, and yes, there are fanfic writers out there whose craft kicks the stuffing out of some professional writers, and yes, there's awesome stuff happening on a community level, but the point is, creating derivative works based on a text currently under copyright is illegal. Please don't jump down the throat of anybody who brings that up. It's relevant to the social position of fanfiction: yes, part of the reason it's ignored is that it's mostly written by women; it's non-hetero-normative; it focuses on issues devalued by the (masculine) establishment; etc etc; but the reason you can't get paid for it is that the law says you can't. Which is another reason for encouraging fanficcers to try original fiction: what happens when we push the boundaries of the status quo with similar work that isn't illegal? Then the legitimate reason to disregard it is gone; then we have to face up to the illegitimate reasons.

The tendency of the fanfic community (in a deliberately generalized sense) to valorize their own activity is entirely expected, and in some cases important. Where I get irritated is when it goes too far. Frex, when people act as if all fanfic is wonderful -- face it, folks, it's got its share of crap, just like everything does, but fanfic probably has a higher proportion of crap for the simple reason that there aren't any barriers to entry; familiarity with a spell-checker is not a prerequisite for posting your work. You don't need to pretend the bad stuff doesn't exist, though.

I think I'll leave it there, not because I've arrived at any conclusion, but because my thoughts have ceased to have anything resembling forward momentum, and rambling on even more aimlessly won't suit anybody's purpose. Now let's see how many people I've managed to offend . . . .

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think the sense of fun, the lack of barriers to entry, and the easy-access egoboo are all things that attract new writers to fanfic, and insofar as it makes them less afraid of the act of putting words on the page and then putting the page where other people can see it, that's fabulous. It could be a great on-ramp to original fic for those who want it, if only we can avoid giving offense by suggesting it.

I also think, though, that fanfic can derail people whose starting ambition was original fiction. There's not a lot of egoboo when you first try pro writing; there's a lot of form letters, instead. So who would want to suffer anonymity and rejection when they could have rave reviews online? I think the payoff of original fic is worth it, but one kind of does have to suffer on the way to it.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I think the payoff of original fic is worth it, but one kind of does have to suffer on the way to it.

One of the interesting questions that might be answered as this all shakes out is whether that's fundamental, or just an artifact of the current system.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think it's an artifact of any system that involves gatekeepers, and personlly? I like gatekeepers. Yeah, they're flawed, but for every masterpiece they reject, they also filter out literally dozens of things I don't want to have to wade through on the bookshelves. Also, I feel like most of those masterpieces will eventually find a path through. Obviously we'll never know about the ones that didn't, but still. I'm in favor of having somebody (or rather, lots of somebodies) in charge of quality control, and as long as that's true, there will be a bar people fail to hurdle on their first try.

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, they're flawed, but for every masterpiece they reject, they also filter out literally dozens of things I don't want to have to wade through on the bookshelves."

See, I'm always left with the sneak suspicion that along with the dross (because I'll admit that slushpiles are often filled with crraaaaaapppppp) they're throwing away the things that I want to read.

Because, let me tell you, it obviously doesn't get to the shelves very often. While Gatekeepers DO police quality, they also police marketability.... which tends to lead to a lot of repetitiveness and blandness in the market.

That and one hears stories about gatekeepers on writing boards and in various sources that are filled with fevered egos, drama queens and rampant unprofessionalisim... which are not things I associate with fields I want to be involved in.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think the tendency of writers to bitch and moan about stuff (just like people in any field bitch and moan about stuff) has skewed your perception of what the pro field is like. Yeah, there's stupidity . . . but I don't think it's necessarily a higher proportion of stupidity than you find anywhere else. A different flavor, maybe. And you're certainly welcome to choose the flavor you wish to deal with.

As for your other point, if you look at top-tier places -- which are, in other words, the most mainstream places -- then yes, they're probably throwing away the stuff you want to read. I do think there are places that run more to your taste, though; it's a matter of finding them (and then hoping they don't die from their niche-hood, which is a problem throughout the genre, really).

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

I hope you're right about comfic fields being more professional than they're perceived. Because to be honest, from my end, it looks like a lot of comfic writers have gotten used to the taste of shit because all that's on the menu are shit sandwiches, shit salads, shit sundaes, and shit shakes. Actually, let me specify that I'm talking more about the periodical market and not so much the novel market. Keeping in mind that I've never tried to be published in the fiction periodicals field.

(Well, okay, I submitted to Aboriginal SciFi when I was 16... but that was when I was still writing either Burroughs pastiches or golden age scifi.)

And the difficulty of finding the niche stuff is by and large why I don't really read much fiction these days. The last specfic book I read was Hal Duncan's (fantastic) Vellum, I think.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

We should talk at some point, and you tell me what you perceive is going on that puts you off so badly.

[the_rck]

What do you consider to be the payoff of original fiction? I'm genuinely curious.

Also, I suspect that some of the hostile reaction by fan fic writers to being asked about writing original fiction comes from wording. In my experience, part of what's offensive is if the wording implies (even if it's not what the speaker intended) that fan fiction should be left behind entirely. Phrasing it more as an additional possibility comes across a lot better.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

For your latter point, see my new post.

For your question . . . erf. That question isn't easily answered, because in a lot of ways it's the fraternal twin of the question, "so why do you write, anyway?" I get paid, but not a lot in the grand scheme of things, and it's a long slog on the way to the paycheck. I get to see my work in print, hold it physically in my hands, but I'm also happy to get published in online magazines, where the presentation often isn't much different from a fanfic archive. I get to reach an audience, but some fanfic sites would probably put me before a larger group of readers than some of the magazines I've been in.

I get to create. I don't know if I can expound on this one in any way that isn't going to start sounding semi-mystical. I'm not queering somebody else's text; I'm making my own. I'm not working with existing characters; I'm feeling them take shape and come to life in my own head. I . . . I don't know how to say "I'm making something new" in a way that won't sound like I'm assuming fanfic never makes anything new, either, but in my mind they're different kinds of newness. And certainly it's true that original fiction, in its own way, grows out of things we writers read, but the relationship to those other texts is different. Instead of slashing The Wheel of Time or writing my own end to it, I want to write a trilogy that will critique the thematic assumptions of that brand of epic fantasy from the ground up, in a world and with characters created with that end in mind.

I could also say the presence of the challenges between me and professional publication adds savor to the victory when I sell something. If it were as easy as posting the story, I wouldn't feel like I had accomplished as much. But when an editor whose taste I respect finds my work worth buying . . . .

I suppose I feel like your question can only be answered properly by comparison to fanfic, and then you run into the problem that professional writers do what they do for a bunch of different reasons, and so do fanfic writers, so anything I say a) might not apply to all people in my camp and b) might contrast with only to a subset of people in the other camp. To the people who write fanfic because of a desire to engage with the worlds and characters somebody else made, I would say, I don't want to play with somebody else's toys. I want to make my own.

(And maybe someday somebody will start fanficcing my own material, and won't that feel odd.)

So any answer I might give feels incomplete. It's a whole mess of answers, some of which I can't even articulate well for myself, let alone in a way that would be comprehensible to anybody else. <waves hand vaguely in the direction of thin air> The payoff is, y'know, that stuff over there.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I think that's the thing, though, is that "the payoff" isn't that simple and isn't necessarily something that will seem like a payoff to everyone.

For example, sell some stories if I can find places that pay more than a pittance because it's one way of bringing in extra money. And of course it's cool to be able to say I'm published, but...to me that's really not that big of an incentive, so most of my time is spent on fanfic, because fanfic offers me something profic can't, which is a chance to interact with my audience and to know I'm being heard. Publishing professionally is kind of like talking to myself. I write because I want to communicate and fandom offers a much bigger payoff in that regard. I know I'm being heard.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

You might be surprised at the extent to which professional writers can interact with their audiences and know they're being heard, mostly thanks to the Internet. My e-mail address is easily available on my website, and I have this journal, so even without things like con attendence that let me meet readers face-to-face, I've had a fair bit of back-and-forth. The ratio isn't as high, of course -- I've sold thousands of copies of my novels, but interacted with maybe a hundred readers (not counting friends and family) -- but on the other hand, if the fanfic rate of response applied to my professional fiction, I'd never get anything done, trying to reply to everybody . . . .

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Analogy which popped into my head: running an RPG in someone else's setting, vs. in a setting of your own. Of course that applies mostly to the GM, unless the players got to add a lot of worldbuilding input.

I don't know if the analogy goes anywhere...