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On writing fanfic
I am really enjoying the December posting thing that people are doing! :) I have WAY too many commitments this month to commit to anything formal, but I was thinking about trying to make an effort to make more posts this month ... possibly stealing a few of the more inspiring topics that I'm seeing on people's lists. :P
Anyway, I wanted to write something today but wasn't sure what to write about, so I asked![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
frith_in_thorns what she thought I should write about, and she suggested "why I write fanfic".
I came into fanfic writing backwards of how most people do. It's not something I started out doing; I wrote original fiction & comics obsessively throughout my teens and early 20s, and I actually tried my first fanfic just for fun, to see if I could write someone else's characters as an experiment. This was in about 2000. I still remember that I found it very difficult. After the first couple of tries, it got easier and then the creativity rocket took off, ha.
I went through a period in about 2004/05 when I tried hard to make myself stop writing fanfic because I had convinced myself it was, if not immoral, then at least bad for me as a writer. At that point, most of my online friends were pro-writer and artist type people who were rather disapproving of fanfic, as a group, and while I didn't really feel I was doing anything wrong, I did agree that it was probably a stage I would need to outgrow in order to become a published writer. It was a fun hobby but I felt it was mutually exclusive with writing for publication. But instead what happened was my wellspring of creativity dried up almost completely. Creatively, things took off for me again when I started writing fanfic again (this was when I got into Stargate Atlantis, in 2006) and I was like, damn, it's connected! In retrospect I'm not sure if I really squashed my creative impulses all that much -- 2004-06 was a really busy RL time for me too, with moving and buying a house and starting a new job. I wasn't watching TV much at all, I didn't really feel fannish about anything, I was too busy to write most of the time ... there were a lot of factors.
But that was the last time I really tried to stop. And I think it's helped to make friends with people who are smart and thoughtful and are also fanfic writers themselves, or at least openly encouraging of it. At this point, most of my friends (at least the people I'm regularly in touch with) are people I met through fandom and LJ, so I guess I'm not getting that "You are hurting yourself as a writer and hurting other writers!" message that I was getting pretty hard in the early 2000s. Actually I think writing fanfic has made me a much better writer than I would be otherwise, at least partly on the 50 pounds of clay principle (you're going to get much better at anything if you do it a lot) but also because it's exposed me to new ideas and new ways of writing and new plot tropes -- basically just a whole other world of creative thought and expression than what you get in published writing. (Independent comics were much the same way and did a lot of the same things for me, but that's a whole other post ... I think the two communities are rather similar in some ways, though -- fanfic vs the indy/punk zine world that existed in the late '90s/early 2000s, though many of the people in that scene would probably hate to hear that, because they are ~SERIOUS ARTISTS~.)
And fanfic doesn't have that ~serious art~ mentality attached to it, which I think is one of the big selling points for me. Fundamentally, I do it because it's fun. It scratches a different itch for me than original writing, where the satisfaction I get comes more from the worldbuilding/plot/craft aspects. Fanfic is more of a direct-to-the-emotions kind of thing. (Actually, one thing I'd like to get better at is importing the emotional punch I get/give in fanfic from there into my original writing -- the books I love best have that emotional punch for me, and I think writing fanfic has helped me get in touch with that side of my own writing. My early writing is very emotionally dry compared to the stuff I've been writing in the last few years, and I think fanfic has helped me learn how to let my emotional side hang out without being embarrassed about it.)
And I really enjoy the community aspect of it -- throwing stories out there and having other people bounce ideas and squee and delight back to you; participating in fic exchanges and bingos and other writing games. Knowing that what you write is going to give joy to five or ten or a few dozen other people -- I really love that. And there's not the same pressure to "make it good" that I feel when I work on original fiction. In fanfic there's always a reset button; you can write ten different, mutually exclusive fanfics about the same event or trope (X dies; X and Y admit their love; X falls off a cliff; X and Y are cops or rock singers or donkeys) whereas in original fiction you only get one shot at it. It's just ... playing. And that's the best thing of all: writing can be play.
I guess there's this idea we have as a society that play is frivolous and useless and we shouldn't do too much of it, but -- we're made to play! We learn that way. We relax that way. Writing should be play, at least some of the time. It shouldn't always be hard and difficult and painful. It's okay to write things that are frivolous and fun. It's good for you.
I do try not to let fanfic take over my whole creative life -- I also have original-fic goals to fulfill. Which is the main reason why I haven't been writing a whole lot of long fanfic lately; there's only so much brainspace I have available to devote to it. I can't ever see myself stopping completely, though, at least not while there's some sort of fictional something that's compelling me in a fannish way. There are a lot of shows, books and movies I love that I just don't have any desire to write fanfic about. But when something gets its hooks into me in that particular way (as White Collar has done the last couple of years) -- I can't really say no. And I don't want to. It's fun; it makes me and other people happy; it's introduced me to a lot of wonderful people over the years; and it's taught me a lot about writing; and I think that's a really great list of reasons for doing anything. :D
Anyway, I wanted to write something today but wasn't sure what to write about, so I asked
frith_in_thorns what she thought I should write about, and she suggested "why I write fanfic".I came into fanfic writing backwards of how most people do. It's not something I started out doing; I wrote original fiction & comics obsessively throughout my teens and early 20s, and I actually tried my first fanfic just for fun, to see if I could write someone else's characters as an experiment. This was in about 2000. I still remember that I found it very difficult. After the first couple of tries, it got easier and then the creativity rocket took off, ha.
I went through a period in about 2004/05 when I tried hard to make myself stop writing fanfic because I had convinced myself it was, if not immoral, then at least bad for me as a writer. At that point, most of my online friends were pro-writer and artist type people who were rather disapproving of fanfic, as a group, and while I didn't really feel I was doing anything wrong, I did agree that it was probably a stage I would need to outgrow in order to become a published writer. It was a fun hobby but I felt it was mutually exclusive with writing for publication. But instead what happened was my wellspring of creativity dried up almost completely. Creatively, things took off for me again when I started writing fanfic again (this was when I got into Stargate Atlantis, in 2006) and I was like, damn, it's connected! In retrospect I'm not sure if I really squashed my creative impulses all that much -- 2004-06 was a really busy RL time for me too, with moving and buying a house and starting a new job. I wasn't watching TV much at all, I didn't really feel fannish about anything, I was too busy to write most of the time ... there were a lot of factors.
But that was the last time I really tried to stop. And I think it's helped to make friends with people who are smart and thoughtful and are also fanfic writers themselves, or at least openly encouraging of it. At this point, most of my friends (at least the people I'm regularly in touch with) are people I met through fandom and LJ, so I guess I'm not getting that "You are hurting yourself as a writer and hurting other writers!" message that I was getting pretty hard in the early 2000s. Actually I think writing fanfic has made me a much better writer than I would be otherwise, at least partly on the 50 pounds of clay principle (you're going to get much better at anything if you do it a lot) but also because it's exposed me to new ideas and new ways of writing and new plot tropes -- basically just a whole other world of creative thought and expression than what you get in published writing. (Independent comics were much the same way and did a lot of the same things for me, but that's a whole other post ... I think the two communities are rather similar in some ways, though -- fanfic vs the indy/punk zine world that existed in the late '90s/early 2000s, though many of the people in that scene would probably hate to hear that, because they are ~SERIOUS ARTISTS~.)
And fanfic doesn't have that ~serious art~ mentality attached to it, which I think is one of the big selling points for me. Fundamentally, I do it because it's fun. It scratches a different itch for me than original writing, where the satisfaction I get comes more from the worldbuilding/plot/craft aspects. Fanfic is more of a direct-to-the-emotions kind of thing. (Actually, one thing I'd like to get better at is importing the emotional punch I get/give in fanfic from there into my original writing -- the books I love best have that emotional punch for me, and I think writing fanfic has helped me get in touch with that side of my own writing. My early writing is very emotionally dry compared to the stuff I've been writing in the last few years, and I think fanfic has helped me learn how to let my emotional side hang out without being embarrassed about it.)
And I really enjoy the community aspect of it -- throwing stories out there and having other people bounce ideas and squee and delight back to you; participating in fic exchanges and bingos and other writing games. Knowing that what you write is going to give joy to five or ten or a few dozen other people -- I really love that. And there's not the same pressure to "make it good" that I feel when I work on original fiction. In fanfic there's always a reset button; you can write ten different, mutually exclusive fanfics about the same event or trope (X dies; X and Y admit their love; X falls off a cliff; X and Y are cops or rock singers or donkeys) whereas in original fiction you only get one shot at it. It's just ... playing. And that's the best thing of all: writing can be play.
I guess there's this idea we have as a society that play is frivolous and useless and we shouldn't do too much of it, but -- we're made to play! We learn that way. We relax that way. Writing should be play, at least some of the time. It shouldn't always be hard and difficult and painful. It's okay to write things that are frivolous and fun. It's good for you.
I do try not to let fanfic take over my whole creative life -- I also have original-fic goals to fulfill. Which is the main reason why I haven't been writing a whole lot of long fanfic lately; there's only so much brainspace I have available to devote to it. I can't ever see myself stopping completely, though, at least not while there's some sort of fictional something that's compelling me in a fannish way. There are a lot of shows, books and movies I love that I just don't have any desire to write fanfic about. But when something gets its hooks into me in that particular way (as White Collar has done the last couple of years) -- I can't really say no. And I don't want to. It's fun; it makes me and other people happy; it's introduced me to a lot of wonderful people over the years; and it's taught me a lot about writing; and I think that's a really great list of reasons for doing anything. :D
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I think you've got a real point there, that it's just plain fun as well as being a little easier to experiment style-wise with fanfic than something you're worldbuilding from the ground up.
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