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

[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.