On the Other Hand

[mouseworks]

I get a bit concerned with women deciding not to do seriously. The thing that bothers me the most about fan fiction is that it's got a flavor of women dabbling, not doing the work intensely. The issues of publishing, not publishing, making a living at it, aside, I wish I didn't get the feeling that part of the value of this was being not one of those professionals, not risking losing the amateur status, not competing.

The focus on publishing and sales as validation tends to be quite warping, except that sales and money do give time to spend more time on working, and the professional world, even something like journalism, tends to cut through superficial excuses.

The vids appear to me to be better than the fan fic, but I don't know if that's because I'm not as familiar with art vids as I am with writing.

Not to say that having fun isn't a good thing, but the greatest fun I've had was working full out and wrestling with material. The peaks are rarer, but they are higher when they come.

Fan fic has a flavor to me of being "don't mind us; we're not taking this seriously." I get nervous about women, so many of them, undercutting their possibilities by not working intensely and as strongly as they can, of making a boundary between professional writers and themselves. This isn't to say that all people should try to be original, unique, artists. And writing fan fic is an improvement over trying to wedge oneself into a favorite writer's life.

I get the same feeling about women doing children's literature -- too much extension of the traditional female role of being the mom, not enough willingness to write as an adult for other adults.

If I had to choose between children's literature and the YA hustle or m/m erotica, I'd go with the slash (and did), but I'd also like to see women be more than the sexual specialists and managers of early childhood.

Most of the fan fic writers are in their lives much more than that, probably more successful at their lives than I've been at mine. While the hysteria around publishing in both academic and neo-pro circles is off-putting, some higher kinds of fun are available, not that anyone has to push for that.

Comments

[damned_colonial]

I earn six figures at my other job. From a purely capitalist point of view, it's not worth my *time* to go chasing after someone to publish my fiction, even if I wanted to write something that was unequivocally publishable. In my case, at least, by choice not to write professionally is not because I've been subjugated into some position of traditional womanly roles, but because I'm too damn busy working in a male-oriented field.

I have done professionally published writing in the past, by the way: tech journalism.

[mouseworks]

That economic reality about your life is why I do have you on my FL and not any number of other people. Also, some others, who do seem to have made similar decisions. I also know how male-dominated that industry is. Bit late in my life to have done things completely differently.

People do make too much of publication (I've had a fellow adjunct tell me that I could only say that from the published side, but I don't think so). When I did the work (meaning worked to the top of my capacity and didn't make excuses for myself), getting published wasn't hard. Most of the people who made pro publication that big a deal generally weren't writing that well and the token was being a substitute for dealing with the problems in their writing. Selling a couple of books really isn't that meaningful. I've known lots of people who sold one or two to commercial publishers and that was it.

Your community has avoided that issue.

I don't know if I'm deluded or not, or have the abilities to do what I'd like to have done, but writing (not publishing) has made me happier than anything else I've done. I also think I could have done other things and been as happy or happier. One of the guys I knew in Virginia is a judge with three novels out now. He won't give up his day job for writing either, but writing also is fun for him. I don't know if being a country judge or lawyer is less time consuming than being in Bay Area technical work, probably does give more time for other things.

At this point, my other job is collecting Social Security and figuring out where in the world I can live off what I made. Will be visiting Nicaragua soon to check that out.

Another comment to Skud

[mouseworks]

You're in the middle of a rather amazing change in how we live, how we socialize, what structures our thinking, and I envy you that access and what you could do with that material. Very few people like me end up in that world and generally not for long.

Fiction about that world would, I think, have an audience.