more thoughts on fanfic
Apr. 28th, 2007 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerI'm sure many of you have stopped going back to check my earlier post on fanfic for new comments, if you ever did so at all, so I thought I'd a) mention that the discussion is still going on there, and b) start a new post.
The reason for the new post is that my thoughts have had some time to compost, or marinate, or whatever the metaphor I want is, and I think I can articulate some things now that I couldn't before. Most particularly, a few things I found myself saying to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ancientwisdom over there.
There's a difference between saying to someone, "have you thought about writing original fiction?" and saying "why don't you write REAL fiction, instead of wasting your time with that fanfic rubbish?" Some people say the latter. Some people say the former, but really mean the latter. But some of us say the former and mean it: our intention is to express admiration of the writer, and to invite/encourage them to try something new. (The analogy this was built on is asking a LARPer if they've considered trying out for a play, as opposed to asking why they waste time with LARPing instead of real theatre. Nothing wrong with the former question, as far as I'm concerned, and they can always respond, "thanks, not interested.")
The problem I'm seeing of late is an increasing tendency of people in the fanfic community to assume I mean the latter, insulting question when I ask the former: the presumption of condescension and patronization where there is none. This automatically casts me in a role I resent (because it isn't true). I'm capable of acknowledging, thank you, that fanfic can be well-written, that it can be a valid use of one's time, that one may engage in fanfic writing for reasons which do not translate over the divide into original fiction, and therefore that one might not be interested in writing original fiction. But can I please be permitted to ask?
And here's why I want to ask: I want to feel like these two communities can talk to each other. Right now, a lot of times I'm made to feel that I can play in my sandbox over here (professional fiction), and you can play in your sandbox over there (fanfiction), and if I want to I can come join you in your sandbox, but I may not invite you over to mine. The traffic, if there is any, must be one-way, and any attempt to make it two-way is an insult on my part.
But, you ask, isn't it two-way anyway? Nothing's stopping somebody from deciding to write original fiction. While this is true, it's true only up to a point, because there are barriers to writing original fiction that don't exist in fanfic. Or, to put it in other terms, original fiction intimidates people in a way fanfic doesn't. Perhaps most prominently, it's less immediately rewarding. Instead of posting something online and garnering positive comments in a short span of time (yay egoboo!), you put it in the mail, wait months, and then get back a form rejection letter (no egoboo for you!). And this will happen a lot. Even Jay Lake, a wildly successful short story writer by anybody's standards, has a 25% sell rate for his submissions; his stories garner an average of three rejections before selling. That gets depressing, folks, especially when you aren't Jay Lake, and a story may get rejected twenty times or more before finding a home.
Which is why mentoring is a big part of the spec-fic community, whether it's organized formally or just through friendships. People bootstrap each other up into the industry with technical advice (here's how to write a cover letter), market tips (hey, that looks like a good story for City Slab), critique (okay, you've got a good idea here, but you need to rework it from the ground up), networking (I recommended you to a woman putting together an anthology), lessons in rejectomancy (JJA said it "didn't work" for him; that's great!) and general hand-holding and reassurance when that twentieth rejection letter for the same story arrives. Absent that, this is a depressing life and often an opaque one, and so new writers may not even give it a shot if somebody doesn't encourage them to do so.
And so we try to pay it forward. I mentored someone through AbsyntheMuse, an online program aimed at teens. A published novelist friend sat with me at World Fantasy and listened to me bitch about a situation I didn't feel comfortable mentioning publicly. Folks on the Rumor Mill trade information about markets constantly. We try to help each other succeed.
To our eyes -- temporarily assuming here the authority to speak for, well, the entire professional writing community, at least those of us who aren't jerks about fanfic -- there are probably people in the fanfic world who would write original fiction, if they were encouraged to do so. If they had somebody to help them over a few of the barriers. And we want to read that original fiction, we want to see other people succeed in our world, and so we try to pay it forward to them. Not because we think there's something wrong with what they do, but because we think there are good things about what we do, even with all the pain and suffering along the way.
But more and more, it feels like we're not welcome to do that. Instead of being able to connect with the people who are interested in what we're offering, we run headfirst into the closed ranks of the people who want us to go away.
Offers of help don't have to be patronizing. The assumption that they are saddens me (or irritates me, depending on what I had for breakfast that day).
I guess what I'm arriving at is this: I have for several years now been nudging/encouragement/kickingkurayami_hime in the shins (yes, dear, I'm outing you a little bit; I'm running out of new forms of blackmail) because she made the mistake of telling me about a story idea she had in her head, and the idea sounded really cool, so I've been trying to get her to write it, because I want to read it. This is the same impulse I feel toward fanfic writers I try to encourage, though in their case it's usually an interest in their skills rather than a specific original story idea (unless they happen to tell me about an original story idea and it sounds good). I mean it as a compliment, and it implies no disapproval on my part. But whereas kurayami_hime usually looks a little flustered and guilty (because I keep pestering her about this on an irregular schedule, and haven't given up yet), lately the fanfic writers seem more offended than anything else, as if I must have something against who and what they are.
I don't. I just want to give them any assistance they might want or need. Because this sandbox over here can seem like hostile and unknown territory, otherwise.
And I wish it were possible for those of us trying to pay it forward to find those of them who might want to cross over, without evoking the specter of the elitists who spit on fanfic, or stepping on the toes of those who are happy in their sandbox and have no interest in going anywhere else.
The reason for the new post is that my thoughts have had some time to compost, or marinate, or whatever the metaphor I want is, and I think I can articulate some things now that I couldn't before. Most particularly, a few things I found myself saying to
ancientwisdom over there.There's a difference between saying to someone, "have you thought about writing original fiction?" and saying "why don't you write REAL fiction, instead of wasting your time with that fanfic rubbish?" Some people say the latter. Some people say the former, but really mean the latter. But some of us say the former and mean it: our intention is to express admiration of the writer, and to invite/encourage them to try something new. (The analogy this was built on is asking a LARPer if they've considered trying out for a play, as opposed to asking why they waste time with LARPing instead of real theatre. Nothing wrong with the former question, as far as I'm concerned, and they can always respond, "thanks, not interested.")
The problem I'm seeing of late is an increasing tendency of people in the fanfic community to assume I mean the latter, insulting question when I ask the former: the presumption of condescension and patronization where there is none. This automatically casts me in a role I resent (because it isn't true). I'm capable of acknowledging, thank you, that fanfic can be well-written, that it can be a valid use of one's time, that one may engage in fanfic writing for reasons which do not translate over the divide into original fiction, and therefore that one might not be interested in writing original fiction. But can I please be permitted to ask?
And here's why I want to ask: I want to feel like these two communities can talk to each other. Right now, a lot of times I'm made to feel that I can play in my sandbox over here (professional fiction), and you can play in your sandbox over there (fanfiction), and if I want to I can come join you in your sandbox, but I may not invite you over to mine. The traffic, if there is any, must be one-way, and any attempt to make it two-way is an insult on my part.
But, you ask, isn't it two-way anyway? Nothing's stopping somebody from deciding to write original fiction. While this is true, it's true only up to a point, because there are barriers to writing original fiction that don't exist in fanfic. Or, to put it in other terms, original fiction intimidates people in a way fanfic doesn't. Perhaps most prominently, it's less immediately rewarding. Instead of posting something online and garnering positive comments in a short span of time (yay egoboo!), you put it in the mail, wait months, and then get back a form rejection letter (no egoboo for you!). And this will happen a lot. Even Jay Lake, a wildly successful short story writer by anybody's standards, has a 25% sell rate for his submissions; his stories garner an average of three rejections before selling. That gets depressing, folks, especially when you aren't Jay Lake, and a story may get rejected twenty times or more before finding a home.
Which is why mentoring is a big part of the spec-fic community, whether it's organized formally or just through friendships. People bootstrap each other up into the industry with technical advice (here's how to write a cover letter), market tips (hey, that looks like a good story for City Slab), critique (okay, you've got a good idea here, but you need to rework it from the ground up), networking (I recommended you to a woman putting together an anthology), lessons in rejectomancy (JJA said it "didn't work" for him; that's great!) and general hand-holding and reassurance when that twentieth rejection letter for the same story arrives. Absent that, this is a depressing life and often an opaque one, and so new writers may not even give it a shot if somebody doesn't encourage them to do so.
And so we try to pay it forward. I mentored someone through AbsyntheMuse, an online program aimed at teens. A published novelist friend sat with me at World Fantasy and listened to me bitch about a situation I didn't feel comfortable mentioning publicly. Folks on the Rumor Mill trade information about markets constantly. We try to help each other succeed.
To our eyes -- temporarily assuming here the authority to speak for, well, the entire professional writing community, at least those of us who aren't jerks about fanfic -- there are probably people in the fanfic world who would write original fiction, if they were encouraged to do so. If they had somebody to help them over a few of the barriers. And we want to read that original fiction, we want to see other people succeed in our world, and so we try to pay it forward to them. Not because we think there's something wrong with what they do, but because we think there are good things about what we do, even with all the pain and suffering along the way.
But more and more, it feels like we're not welcome to do that. Instead of being able to connect with the people who are interested in what we're offering, we run headfirst into the closed ranks of the people who want us to go away.
Offers of help don't have to be patronizing. The assumption that they are saddens me (or irritates me, depending on what I had for breakfast that day).
I guess what I'm arriving at is this: I have for several years now been nudging/encouragement/kicking
kurayami_hime in the shins (yes, dear, I'm outing you a little bit; I'm running out of new forms of blackmail) because she made the mistake of telling me about a story idea she had in her head, and the idea sounded really cool, so I've been trying to get her to write it, because I want to read it. This is the same impulse I feel toward fanfic writers I try to encourage, though in their case it's usually an interest in their skills rather than a specific original story idea (unless they happen to tell me about an original story idea and it sounds good). I mean it as a compliment, and it implies no disapproval on my part. But whereas kurayami_hime usually looks a little flustered and guilty (because I keep pestering her about this on an irregular schedule, and haven't given up yet), lately the fanfic writers seem more offended than anything else, as if I must have something against who and what they are.I don't. I just want to give them any assistance they might want or need. Because this sandbox over here can seem like hostile and unknown territory, otherwise.
And I wish it were possible for those of us trying to pay it forward to find those of them who might want to cross over, without evoking the specter of the elitists who spit on fanfic, or stepping on the toes of those who are happy in their sandbox and have no interest in going anywhere else.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 05:04 pm (UTC)It's at least a relief that professional writers are trying to help the smaller fanfic writers, though. But it also harder when I keep on measuring my work against my boyfriend's who's another great writer, but it's probably going to be a while before he takes the dive into the professional career...at least he better if we're planning, or trying to get our stories out there.....
The sad thing is, I've spent what...about three years on my current story (hope it's okay to mention the title) The Storm's Edge, and after those years, everything has been modified and now the entire story is changed. It's definitely the best thing I've ever written and it's my baby, but...comparing it, once again, to everyone else who are professional writers, I doubt my "skill" in writing and get discouraged...then again, I brought it upon myself. If I ever get do do what I've dreamed of and was actually able to publish it and its two sequels, I'd be so happy, but lets face it, how often does that happen, right? ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 05:26 pm (UTC)The most useful tip I can think of to give you is, write other things, too. If you spend years on the same story, going over it again and again and rebuilding it and then fixing things and then changing stuff again . . . I did that for about four years -- until the same age you are, actually -- and then finally realized that, while there were things about the story and characters I very much liked, I kept partially tearing down what I'd built and then slapping more on top, with structurally unsound results. So I laid that project aside, with the intent of letting it fade in my mind so that when I came back to it, I'd have the perspective necessary to remove the stuff that wasn't so great and refine the bits that were. I still periodically go back and knock the dust off it, to see where it stands. But in the meantime, I started working on three or four other things -- new ones, that had nothing to do with the older project -- and by stretching myself out in different directions, I developed my craft muscles much more effectively.
In other words, multiple projects are probably good for you. The lessons from one will help you with another. If you keep focusing on one thing for too long, it's easy to lose perspective on it, and not know whether it needs major revision or is ready to be sent out.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-29 07:05 pm (UTC)I'm just kind of haunted by wanting to get it finally finished. Also, I have a lot of trouble coming up with new ideas. How long does it usually take you to think of a new story?
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 11:34 pm (UTC)There's no simple answer to that question.
Really, what's been going on is I've been stockpiling story ideas for, well, ever. The strong ones last until I get around to writing them; the weak ones fall apart and go away and become compost for other ideas. So I'm rarely sitting around trying to come up with an idea; when that happens, it's because I'm trying to create an idea to fit particular requirements. (Like my failed attempt recently to come up with something for Jeff VanderMeer's pirate anthology.)
The more you feed your brain with interesting source material, the easier it will probably be to come up with ideas. And by that I mean nonfiction as well as fiction, or maybe even in preference to fiction. Also, the more ideas you come up with, the easier it will be to come up with ideas; the little buggers breed. And then some day you, too, can look in despair at the list of unfinished or unstarted story ideas you have and wonder when you'll get around to them all . . . .
no subject
Date: 2007-05-04 12:53 am (UTC)I've been trying to come up with some short stories to give myself a break from The Storm's Edge (like you said) and right now, I'm currently working on a small, AU, Lord of the Rings story. Figured it would be a good start for right now. :p And I've got a total of 2,100+ words. Woo hoo! lol Though it kind of sucks that no one wants to read it. :\ :(