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mouseworks at 09:03am on 18/05/2010
mouseworks at 09:03am on 18/05/2010I 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.
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.
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