SubscribeI'm not lying when I tell you that it's some of the most gratifying writing, not to mention roleplaying, that I've ever done.Needless to say this has nothing to do with the art of writing fiction for a wide audience. 'Gratifying' in fanfic-writer/RPG terms is essentially unrelated from 'gratifying' in readerly terms; the former's to do with enjoyment of the process and (sorry) self-centered experience, the latter with a reader/writer contract predicated on quite a different sort of generosity.
I forgot how defensive MeFi makes me, because I read your comment as: You are a wanky, masturbatory hack. I'll be honest, some of my shit is wanky and some of it is masturbatory, but that's due largely to the fact that it's free-writing and not-for-publication.Sorry about that - I didn't mean it as an attack. Rather I meant it this way: we are all wanky, masturbatory hacks. I think the basic unit of creative bravery is subjecting one's work to the criticisms of those who have no investment in the identity of the creator; the audience for fanfiction isn't an art-audience, it's something else, cast in a social form that actually mandates a certain kind of short-time-horizon (and to an extent short-imaginative-horizon) satisfaction. I find Fandom, this complex of interlocking text-fandoms characterized by variants on the same geek aesthetics, absolutely fucking maddening - but I'm clearly a fan of several texts/creators by any measure. The decision re: whether to write fanfic lies along the same line of separation: it's a social gesture, not a literary one, and I neither want nor (to my mind) need it. I need other things, some equally shameful. :)
I'll also admit that it's rare that I want to read other people's RP or tagfic, but it's not NEVER. A notable percentage of writers that I've found in those forums are fcuking fantastic and worth reading as serialized short stories. I follow them like I would a TV show. In turn, some people (usually co-players) followed my writing.Here's where our experience differs most radically, I suppose: I've never read a single piece of fanfic - and I've tried, I've taken recommendations, read dozens - made of interesting prose or working according to a structure that was itself interesting. The questions a piece of fanfic sets out to answer aren't generative in the same way as those that prompt a piece of original writing. Why is most (published!) fantasy writing even worse than the low bar for most (published!) literary fiction? Because for the last half-century most popular fantasy is a particular kind of escapist (Tolkien) fanfiction. That kind of parasitic worldbuilding impulse is just plain problematic, not in itself, but because there's basically no incentive to couple it with the extrinsic gratifications of communicating-with-others. Owning a world like that, obsessing over its details, it becomes so hard to kill one's darlings.
Finally, as a professional reader (I'm an editor), I feel that have a grasp on reading for gratification, as well as writing for self-gratification... so stating that it was some of the most gratifying writing I've done was a considered statement.Roger that. But I still put a lot of weight on that consideration, i.e. who is the ultimate recipient of satisfaction here? If it's not an imagined Reader - and in fandom, simply put, it just almost without exception isn't - then it's not about serving narrative logic. The desire-logics of fandom do not serve narrative construction well. (cf. NaNoWriMo, my hated hobbyhorse!)
Benefits include immediate feedback, direct interaction...For a whole mess of reasons I consider both of these hindrances as much as benefits. Briefly: 'immediate feedback' does for the creative mind (the mechanism for aesthetic judging) what 'putting numbers in your cell phone' does for the memory - it outsources the work, fragments the stored-in-memory whole. That's a whole different kettle of discursive fish though, maybe for later. As for direct interaction, similar trouble: I'm not sure direct interaction with people who're in the fan-reader position is particularly helpful to the author. Not during the writing, anyhow - because they're not conditioned to want what's best for the story. Indeed, definitionally so: they're not capable of that kind of externalization and dispassion. That's not a fan position. It is specifically uncritical. Critical analysis/evaluation is this whole other imaginative stance, and it's a rare bird who can do both things at once, in my fan experience.
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posted by FritoKAL at 3:06 PM on April 4, 2007