Hmmm

[neadods]

Fandom_Wank does have its points - among them, warning me of this before Malice started.

This affirms something discussed in an earlier post... I still want a second reviewing job, and I still hope to juggle the reviewing jobs into something more. I had thought to get a job reviewing a different genre to branch out, test my skills, get more free books.

But obviously I'm not paying enough attention to my chosen genre if less than 24 hours before I head to a large regional con, I'm getting my news from Fandom_Wank!

So here's the deal; I'm throwing my lot in with mysteries wholesale. (Hey, at least it means that I only have to read the eyeball-sporking stuff in one genre.) At Bouchercon and Malice I'm going to look hard at the clubs, magazines, organizations, etc., and I'm going to seriously concentrate on making a name for myself in mysteries.

Comments

[maryannegruen.livejournal.com]

I used to belong to a lot of writer oriented lists (some affiliated with MWA and Sisters in Crime) and from what I've seen there, most writers who are looking to publish hate fanfiction with a capital H. These writers see their creations as belonging totally to them in a strictly monogamous relationship, that doesn't involve the world or the culture at large. In their minds, it's probably equivalent to fans suggesting that they have the right to have sex with his/her spouse.

Rowling has the right idea. She put out a message through her lawyer a year or so ago that said she considers fanfiction to be flattering, but she can't allow any porn oriented stuff because of the large numbers of children who follow her series. I figure that's fair.

Personally, I think characters and stories come from a place beyond us, from a sort of Muse who has an involvement with all the creativity in the world, both the artists and the fans. To me this explains why many artists (and even inventors) can sometimes have the same ideas at the same time. This Muse has a certain list of ideas she needs to get out to move the world forward. Which makes these characters more like children than monogamous lovers. They grow up and go out into the world and those who gave birth to them lose a certain amount of control.

Right now I think we may be headed toward a time when ordinary people take writing and stories back into their proverbial home caves and confer with their families, friends, and strangers beyond, in a sort of electronic campfire. That's what all these blogs, fanfic sites, and Fanfiction.net's Fictionpress.com are leading to.

On one of these Yahoo lists a couple of years back someone mentioned that while we have lots of amateurs playing baseball, or theatre, or the like, we don't have much in the way of amateur writing....at least not until recently. As a result, a lot of writers fear a loss of power or pecking order. But they shouldn't.

My community theatre group put on a production of Guys and Dolls late last year and none of the audience members complained that the man who played Nathan Detroit wasn't as good as Nathan Lane. They didn't expect him to be (he's a scientist in "real" life). Nor did they expect the sets to be up to Broadway's level. And they lived with the lousy school auditorium sound and the lights that flared as if they were haunted. Still, everyone onstage and in the audience seemed to have a good time. The audience got their $15 or $8 worth of entertainment. Of course, they wouldn't have paid as much as people are now shelling out for the limited engagement of The Odd Couple with Nathan Lane. But no one has trouble knowing the difference.

The onset of radio started the trend of outside entertainment entering the home. The Internet is just continuing that. Now everyone can be a writer. Some professionals and would-be's feel threatened by that because it's a new thing. But believe me, Nathan Lane didn't feel threatened by the guy who played Nathan Detroit in our show. And no one in our cast was surprised that they weren't sought out by a Broadway producer. We just did the most professional show we could, as people who do it mostly on a part-time basis with limited talent. And though occasionally someone will invite agents, they usually don't come.

Fanfiction is much the same. Some do it on the fly while doing a hundred other things. They don't have time to think like a Nathan Lane-type and they may not have the equivalent of his talent. Others may be like the young man who played the lead in our production of Guys and Dolls (Sky Masterson). He was just passing through on his way to getting a job with the professional road show of Fiddler on the Roof. We'll probably never see him again. But come September, we'll be doing another show, doing our best within our limitations to make it professional. And the audience will come, still knowing none of us is equal to Nathan Lane.

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

I can't agree enough with this essay. I enjoy writing but don't know if I ever want to put in enough effort to do it professionally. So yeah, amateur writing is a good way to put it, and I liked your analogy with amateur theater. Fanfic is kind of like sitting around in your basement and putting on scenes from a play. Yeah, you didn't pay the royalties, but you're not making money either.

The other reason it gets me when writers get all proprietary of their charcters is that literary fanfic is a legitimate genre that makes money as long as the characters are out of copyright--witness the (in my opinion excrable) Pride and Prejudice spin offs, the novels with Shakespeare characters, the novels that retell fairytales or legends.

As soon a writer creates a character and has readers, the character exists in the minds of the readers as well as in the mind of the writer, and the writer has no control after she is done writing over how I view and manipulate the characters in my mind. If a writer is very very skilled and lucky, her characters will out-live her in the minds and pens of others. I think writers should be flattered and thrilled beyond measure if that happens. I know I would be.