Eat your carrots and write your fanfic.

[shadowscast]

Every once in a while I feel moved to write an angsty "Oh god why do I spend so much of my time and energy writing fanfic?" post. I think about the thousands of hours I've spent on fic, and wonder if they'd have been better spent some other way—learning to knit or playing the piano or saving the world or something. I get frustrated with having a hobby (passion) that I can't tell my mother or my coworkers about. (Though, my aunt reads my fic and I've managed to discovered a couple of coworkers who I can talk about fandom with, so really I guess it's not so grim.) And finally there's the eternal siren song of "original" fiction: if I'm going to spend all this time writing, why not write things that are theoretically publishable?

I've never gone and written that post, mostly because the times when I want to write it are the times when I'm feeling most blocked and icky about writing, at which point I can't manage to get it together to post, either. I'm not writing that post today, either. Instead, I'm going with the upbeat: figuring out ways in which fanfic makes my life better.

The easy answer to "why do I write fanfic?" is "because it's fun!" The problem is, sometimes it really isn't. I'm sitting there rewriting the same damn sentence for an hour and a half, and it won't come out right, and my brain feels like mouldy cheese and my back is aching and I'm wondering why-the-hell-am-I-doing-this-to-myself but something in me just won't let me quit. You know?

The following list is for those times.


5 Reasons Why Writing Fanfic Is Good For Me

1) It stops me from quitting my day job and running off to become a starving writer.

This is important! In fact, when likeadeuce brought up this point in the discussion under a post mireille719 made a few weeks ago, I actually laughed out loud for joy, realizing how true it was about my life.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a writer. I majored in English lit for my first degree, and then after finishing an MSc in mathematics and realizing I didn't want to do a PhD, I seriously considered doing a master's degree in creative writing. Like, I read brochures, compared programs, talked to people who'd done it. Every once in a while I still have pangs.

But seriously? I teach math at a junior college. I love my job, I think I'm good at my job, and I'm almost certainly making more money than I ever would as a professional writer.

Fanfic gives me a creative outlet—lets me be a writer, and with the added satisfaction of actually having readers, too!—and since it's completely and utterly unpublishable, I'm not tempted to try making a living at it.


2) It's good for my overall writing ability and my relationship with language.

I don't mean this in a it's-good-practice-for-writing-professionally kind of way (see point #1). I mean, writing fanfiction forces me to think about and develop my writing technique in ways that help me with all of the writing I do. Letters to my mother! Emails to students! Boring annual reports on professional development activities! Word problems on calculus tests, even! They certainly all require different kinds of writing, but there are common elements: clarity, appropriate tone, and thinking about the reader and the information that needs to be conveyed, for instance.


3) Friendships: multigenerational, international, and even local!

One of the greatest things about fandom is the people, and writing is my main way of participating in fandom. Writing fanfic, therefore, has led to a lot of friendships that are very important to me.

When I first started writing fanfic, I was twenty-two years old. The fandom I landed in was populated mostly by writers who were older than me by a decade or two. It was the first time in my life that I'd ever formed friendships across age differences of more than a year or two, and it was a wonderful, enlightening experience. Fandom continues to be the main source of intergenerational friendships in my life, and now (at the ripe old age of 29!) I'm starting to benefit from the other side of it, too; my friendship with my young cousins, for instance, is based largely on our shared fannish interests. (They're not writers, but they are vidders!)

It's also been really cool getting to know people in far-off places via fandom; there's the obvious bias towards English-speaking countries and places with good internet access, but it's definitely more of a global experience than I ever had growing up!

Finally, through fandom I've actually made a number of friends in my own city; now I can meet them for coffee, or watching TV, or just hanging out and having fun! (I may even be able to hit them up for babysitting soon! Muahahahaha.)


4) It gets these stories out of my head! Plus, I discover that other people share my kinks!

I didn't start writing fanfic until I was twenty-two, but I always made up stories in my head about the characters in my favourite TV shows, books and movies. This way, writing fanfic, at least I get them out of my head and onto the page! (Er, screen.)

And considering the content of some of these stories, it's been wonderfully reassuring to me to discover that other people enjoy reading them. I mean, I guess I'm still a bit sheepish about my hurt/comfort fixation, but not nearly as much so as I used to be. I'm not so weird after all! (Or, maybe I am weird, but we're all weird together. That's okay too!)


5) It leads to a deeper, more satisfying relationship with the source texts (watching TV with my brain switched on).

Remember how TV was supposed to turn us all into zombies because of the sheer passivity of our relationship with it? Yeah, I don't worry too much about that happening.

Fanfic gives me a reason to watch my shows really, really closely, and to think about them. To think about character development, and themes, and narrative arcs, and directorial choices, and why X happened instead of Y. Fandom is an English lit class! (Among other things.)

It also gives me a forum for speculation, for refining these ideas, and for playing with the characters and stories myself. It lets me engage in an active, satisfying relationship with popular culture.

***

So, anyway, that's what I came up with! Now I'm headed off to a barbeque. Yay, summer!

Comments

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked the post! :)

We take a close look at how the writing is done, what's done well and not.

Totally. I've found watching Heroes, for instance, that I can see glaring flaws in the writing (omg the heavy-handed exposition!) ... though I do enjoy it anyway, because the story is just plain fun.

And, er, which 3 lines?

Err ... which which 3 lines? *flails in confusion*