money and fanfic

[lobelia321]

I tigged this in in mirabellawotr's LJ but then got so enamoured with own golden dew drops of wysdomme that I just thought I'd bore all of you with them as well:

The money issue is, I think, one of the most obvious and striking and also fundamental differences between fanfic and origifc. And perhaps it is the *possiblity* that any origfic on the web may be turned into a publication that is sold somehow or other that also taints (and I use the word advisedly) origfic with the brush of commercialism.

Fanfic is so wonderfully uncommercial. It swims in the interstices of capitalism. It feeds off capitalism because we need the global media to feed us with the televised or cine-screened pap we twist to our purposes (and, of course, the world-wide publishing industry) but what astounds and delights me always is the generosity of online fans: generosity of time, energy, and money too, if you count up the gifts that get sent by surface mail.

It's also testament to the power of narrative. It is as if people just can't stop themselves: narrative *will* be generated. It just sprouts up everywhere.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I wonder if money is as fundamental as the notion that one owns one's origfic, that what one writes is therefore canon. That's a very, very powerful draw, at least it was for me as a kid and had no remote notion that anyone would actually ever buy my scribblings: friends around me wrote fanfic but I never could because I knew that I couldn't actually change anything in the worlds I enjoyed reading about. In my own world, I ruled!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I know absolutely what you mean. No quibbling over characterisations and canon and 'ooh, can you rite me more elijah pleez'. And the pure *invention* of it.

Still, my attitude to writing also changed once grown up. Hm, but perhaps it's more that I wish to recapture the pecuniary innocence of childhood and that's why I fell into slash, hook line and...?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Addendum: In tigging sheldrake below I realised that I want to disagree slightly with you. I most definitely feel that I *own* my fanfic. My Orlando is mine and only mine, his dialogue is mine, his psyche is mine, his orgasms are mineminemine, and my Bern is mine, and even my New Zealand is mine. So for me it is, after all, not about origfic as owned as fanfic as somehow less owned. I do feel I own it, all of it. Part of the pleasure is in appropriating something that is not mine and *making* it mine through the sheer power of words.

[woodcliff.livejournal.com]

I love you and your ideas. Your idealism does more than justify or explain what we do. You talk about the driving forces behind it. It does feel to me like a compulsion most of the time. And the fics that show up prolifically when there is a juicy subject do appear like they've just spurted out of the narrative drive. I suppose its like gossiping, its trivial and essential to a community.
Gosh, if there weren't any more narratives, the fabric of the universe will probably shrivel up and die. Or I would.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*is momentarily distracted from topic by your icon*

I know what you mean about fics 'spurting' (*bursts out laughing* -- ah, only a slasher...). And the internet shows it up. It was perhaps always there but the online life allows you to *witness* the creation and proliferation of narratives as they happen.

[pecos.livejournal.com]

What you said is so true... I refuse to even let the 'getting paid to write' and the 'not getting paid to write' even meet each other; I shudder to think that they might brush past within the sordid circuits of my humble computer. It certainly keeps the fans in fandom, and I think that the occasional rare but present TRUELY AWFUL writer is also a blessing, because there's always someone here who'd going to love their stuff and encourage them to keep at it and hopefully get better.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, *pets bad!fic*. I used not to mind bad!fic for precisely the reason you give. I've sort of gone off it at the moment but it is a cumulative enterprise and in a way the giants stand on the dwarfs' shoulders.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

I think that's what ultimately sucked me into writing fanfic: the lack of commercial pressure is so freeing. God forbid I should ever write a novel just for fun, just to see if I could do it. Because the next question is, when are you getting it published? With fanfic, there are no such questions, and it's refreshing to write just for the joy of it and the feedback. And maybe, just maybe, I keep hoping that the creative juices that the fanfic got flowing again will generate some origfic someday!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes! Although with me the creative origfic juices haven't started their flowing yet but who knows?

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course. All these things that are so wonderful about fanfic, are the things that keeps drawing me back.

It's hard sometimes, though. I care too much what people think, and I know that people do wonder why I 'waste my time' on fanfic when I could be writing 'proper stuff'. And if I just tell people I write, the next question is always, "Have you tried to get anything published?" So I've stopped mentioning it at all.

The trouble is, I *would* like to write origfic. I *would* like to write something publishable, and I would like to paid for it and recognised for it and all the rest.

When I start thinking about this I realise that it's all mixed up in my brain with my personal worries about career and worth and money and all sorts of dull stuff. It's a mess, really.

When it comes down to it, there's some kind of pleasure in writing fanfic that seems to dissolve when I try to write origfic. Fanfic is so much to do with shared knowledge of the source material, and if you take my stories away from that, they seem to wither and die. There are AUs that I've written that could become more or less orig with a couple of changed names ... but I don't think that's going to work. Without the solid wall of canon to lean on, they seem weak and pale, and somehow less.

And then again, maybe my fanfic is better for the same reason my sketchbooks were always better than my final pieces when I was at college. No pressure. These things aren't really 'meant' to be fine and important and good, so you can do what you want, and enjoy it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

and I know that people do wonder why I 'waste my time' on fanfic when I could be writing 'proper stuff'.
Well, the only person I talk to about this irl is t'h and he's always saying just this. Or rather, he's stopped saying it and just looks puzzled and mildly worried. But it's the fanfic vs *prover* divide that lives in my head that's the irritant. If it were only other people and I could be high and mighty...

When it comes down to it, there's some kind of pleasure in writing fanfic that seems to dissolve when I try to write origfic. Fanfic is so much to do with shared knowledge of the source material,
Yes! Why is that? But it is! And sartorias above said that it's not only financial but also to do with ownership -- you *own* origfic -- but I just realised in tigging you that I most definitely feel ownership of all my fanfic. They are *mine*. And my Orli is mine, he doesn't belong to the world or to the rl Orli, and my Bern, and my settings, and so forth.

Oh god, and what you say about the solid wall of canon... To have to build that wall oneself!!

*scared*

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

There are so many interesting questions here...re ownership, this becomes such a vexed question. I have fellow writers who foam at the mouth at the very idea of fanfic--they say if they ever spot any they will hunt down the person and throw lawyers at them for theft.

I tend to feel more ambivalent: historically, what we may as well call fanfic existed all over Europe for about eight hundred years, with the Arthurian material. I have seen some signs that there is the same phenom, though differently approached in China. (There, people would pass around ms and write comments in the margins, and if the comments were sufficiently witty, they'd be copied into the next copy of the story, and so on.)

I know there is a surprising little flourish of fanfic about one of my books, but I don't read it because so many of the details are wrong to my eye, and because I know that this or that character would never say or do such a thing. But the writers get pleasure out of exploring my world just a bit, and their readers...and I figure they will move on, either to other worlds, or their own, so where is the harm? But if someone tried to publish something in my world that I felt was dead wrong, I don't know how I'd cope--I do know I'd feel anxious and angry and maybe even violated. Vexed question.

As for the safety of fanfic versus the Big Brother aspect of orgific: well, there is at first that sense that Teacher is watching over your shoulder when you commence writing for submitting to publishers. That sense of "Okay, this one is real--this one lays me on the line." It's that last instinct that one has to overcome: one must, must, must approach origfic with exactly the same sense of fun that one approaches fanfic, I do believe. It has to be fun to write, or it won't be fun to read.

But afterward, the text is text. In fanfic, it seems to me, you already know the world belongs to someone else, so you don't feel that you personally are on the line, but that's deceptive. The text is text, not you. When one gets critiques for origfic, the idea is to make it better--more accessible to a wider readership, etc. You aren't judged, only the words on the paper. And if a publisher turns it down, again, it's not you turned down, just this particular assembly of words. If one can get over that particular mental hurdle, regard the writing as a skill to be acquired, then (from my experience, at least--I cannot pretend to speak for every writer!) the anxiety lessens, and there is a joy to be had in that kind of writing and publishing. And of course the payoff is acquiring one's own fans, for the labors of one's own imagination.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Heh, I just replied to someone who posted a review on hp_fictalk (or is it hpfic_talk?), saying that a particular fic was all very well as FICTION but was it FANFICTION? I asked her what she thought the distinction was but what I really found interesting was simply turning the duality upside down. Whereas I tend to think (as you) of 'fanfic' vs 'proper fic', what happens to the argument if one simply decides to discuss 'proper fanfic' vs 'mere fic'? It's an amusing thought experiment, at any rate.

I have fellow writers who foam at the mouth at the very idea of fanfic
Yes, fair enough. Though that doesn't stop me writing it. And feeling ownership of my little corner of pilfered fantasy.

historically, what we may as well call fanfic existed all over Europe for about eight hundred years,
Oh goodness, longer. What, after all, is the Iliad? *giggles* It's a reworking of pre-existing myths. And then Aeschylus and Euripides and Virgil plough that same furrow. And then the apocryphal books of the Bible. All the saints' legends.

Okay, this could get ridiculous. I'm not calling those things fanfic, that would be absurd. I think the 'fan' is a modern phenomenon. But fanfic is a subset of what was going on with those earlier reworkings. It's part of our narrative curiosity: we simply like swimming in the interstices of existing masterplots and picking at the loose threads!

In fanfic, it seems to me, you already know the world belongs to someone else, so you don't feel that you personally are on the line, but that's deceptive.
Yes. I think that's true. Interesting idea.

When one gets critiques for origfic, the idea is to make it better--more accessible to a wider readership, etc.
Ah, it's that what puts me off! I have no ambition to be published. I just do want to write origfic. Or rather, I will rephrase that: I do have ambitions to be published but they detract from my pleasure in writing so I don't want to feed them. I want to leave the publishing ambitions to my professional non-fictional writing.