ignorance here is less than bliss
May. 14th, 2010 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabinetzinI've been looking at the "why I write fanfic" meme, and I'd do it, but nothing on it seems to express my main reasons for writing fic, which I don't think I could sum up in one sentence anyway. So I suppose I'll take a break from reading badfic and talk about it a little.
I hate it when people work under the assumption that fanfic is practice for writing "real" stories. Because you know what? I'm probably never going to be published (as a fiction author, I'll be published as an academic or be unemployed). Not because my work's not quality- and some of it is- but because I don't have the desire to write a novel.
I don't usually find the spoon analogy applicable to myself (I'm sometimes fond of saying that for me it's more like forks- if I collect enough of them, I tend to get stabbed), but in this instance it totally applies. I just don't have the spoons to write anything more than about twenty thousand words. Writing forty thousand toppled me into a depression that took me months to get out of; I can't even fathom writing a novel-length story, original or not. The reward structure is all wrong for me- I need little bits of encouragement, not to labor in quiet for months (or years) and then have one triumphant moment at the end.
And anyway, even when I do write original stuff, guess what? It's still bricolage (building from existing pieces). When I write original stuff, I write about vampires and people with super powers and assassins and road trips to find one's self. None of it is new. It's bricolage and cultural cannibalism whether you write about John and Rodney or about Steve the out of work vampire or about somebody's coming-of-age or about a quiet little town in the hills where evil lurks. You are not a special snowflake. What you do is not original. You are a cultural production. GET OVER IT.
[/unexpected soapbox]
Furthermore, I'm a breaker, more than anything else. Some people are creators, I suppose, but my forte is breaking things down to their component parts. It's the way I communicate, the way I teach, the way I think. I enjoy studying things that other people think of as hard or monolithic, because I find it easy to take them apart and communicate them efficiently. I like to play with people's assumptions about things, because I find it incredibly satisfying when people go away with a different perspective or a different kind of knowledge than they started out with.
I write fanfic because it meshes well with what I like to do. Fanfiction is about a whole bunch of people building a community together, gravitating towards the same tropes and themes. And I like to take those tropes, break them open, twist them around, hold them up and say, "No, really, it's like this." And yeah, sometimes that includes writing porn, but you know what? Porn- the good, non-exploitative kind- is awesome, and well written porny fic is even better.
So that's why I do it.
I hate it when people work under the assumption that fanfic is practice for writing "real" stories. Because you know what? I'm probably never going to be published (as a fiction author, I'll be published as an academic or be unemployed). Not because my work's not quality- and some of it is- but because I don't have the desire to write a novel.
I don't usually find the spoon analogy applicable to myself (I'm sometimes fond of saying that for me it's more like forks- if I collect enough of them, I tend to get stabbed), but in this instance it totally applies. I just don't have the spoons to write anything more than about twenty thousand words. Writing forty thousand toppled me into a depression that took me months to get out of; I can't even fathom writing a novel-length story, original or not. The reward structure is all wrong for me- I need little bits of encouragement, not to labor in quiet for months (or years) and then have one triumphant moment at the end.
And anyway, even when I do write original stuff, guess what? It's still bricolage (building from existing pieces). When I write original stuff, I write about vampires and people with super powers and assassins and road trips to find one's self. None of it is new. It's bricolage and cultural cannibalism whether you write about John and Rodney or about Steve the out of work vampire or about somebody's coming-of-age or about a quiet little town in the hills where evil lurks. You are not a special snowflake. What you do is not original. You are a cultural production. GET OVER IT.
[/unexpected soapbox]
Furthermore, I'm a breaker, more than anything else. Some people are creators, I suppose, but my forte is breaking things down to their component parts. It's the way I communicate, the way I teach, the way I think. I enjoy studying things that other people think of as hard or monolithic, because I find it easy to take them apart and communicate them efficiently. I like to play with people's assumptions about things, because I find it incredibly satisfying when people go away with a different perspective or a different kind of knowledge than they started out with.
I write fanfic because it meshes well with what I like to do. Fanfiction is about a whole bunch of people building a community together, gravitating towards the same tropes and themes. And I like to take those tropes, break them open, twist them around, hold them up and say, "No, really, it's like this." And yeah, sometimes that includes writing porn, but you know what? Porn- the good, non-exploitative kind- is awesome, and well written porny fic is even better.
So that's why I do it.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-14 06:31 pm (UTC)And I'm with you on long fiction, totally.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-14 09:58 pm (UTC)