Teleidoscope

Tue, Feb 12, 2008

Fanfiction

Posted at 11:59 pm MST to Creative Work

I've become addicted to Shadow Unit a new complex of online entertainment that includes, among other things, the ongoing LiveJournals of several fictional characters. It describes itself as fan-fiction for a TV show that does not exist.

I have also been exploring the LiveJournals and blogs of some of Shadow Unit's creators: Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, and Sarah Monette.

I have been especially engrossed in Elizabeth Bear's LiveJournal, where she writes extensivle and articulately about writing and life with impressive candor and humor. It's making me think about my own occasional forays into fiction writing, and what I want to do in the way of writing going forward.

My mind has been full of stories as long as I remember, with characters and worlds and plot fragments tangling together. Both the worlds and the casts go through major phases: for about a year, now, Tosun Bekdeli and his mule Rakkas and their associates have lived in my head. Before that it was the world of Cherani and its inhabitants, and before that there were others of varying degrees of originality.

Some of my stories have made it out of my head and onto paper over the years. I had one twopager published in a company newsletter in 1989 or 1990, and I had several stories published in StarTrek fanzines in the 70s and in an anime APA in the late 80s or early 90s. I have also completed one original novel, which was rejected for professional publication because it was basically too weird for the room.

I should note that although my stories were published in fan outlets, I have only ever written one short vignette that can be described as fanfiction. I am obsessive-compulsive about world-building details and find it impossible to write other people's worlds. So my stories that were published in the StarTrek fanzines were original fiction not involving any Star Trek settings or characters. My APA stories were inspired by anime and manga and Japanese culture and folklore, but the specific characters, settings and histories were all original.

I am trying to figure out why the stories were able to come out of my head at a few times during my life and not at others. There seem to be three factors that I can identify.

I do not seem to actually output fiction when I am producing a lot of code at work.

I do not seem to output anything without at least a nominal audience -- like the fanzines or APA group, or the hypothetical audience of the unsold novel.

And I seem to produce fiction when I am interacting frequently with other writers and artists.

In the late 70s my best friend was a writer and artist who was also publishing original work in SF and Star Trek fanzines and APAs. I still have a binder full of an improvisational collaboration we tried to write (basically, some of her characters encountering some of mine, out in space) typing pages and mailing them back and forth. But she suddenly stopped communicating with me in 1981 -- I have never quite understood why.

I wonder sometimes whether I was expected to seek her out and beg for her attention. But I was in no shape to do that.

I was busy programming for a few years after that, and taking various odd classes and getting involved with feminist Paganism, and meeting Nanette, and having at least one bout of serious depression.

In the late 80s at a MileHiCon, I met Patricia Munson-Siter. I had known of her for years: she was active as a writer, artist organizer in a number of different fandoms, including the ones where I lurked on the fringes. She got me addicted to anime and manga the first time around, and invited me to join one of her APAs. We collaborated on our APA subs for a couple of cycles, then split off into separate ones.

Pat and I started writing novels at the same time. I finished mine, but I don't know wether she finished hers. After her husband left the AirForce, they moved to New Jersey and lived with his parents for a while, and she dropped out of touch with fandom. (It seems that she is still an organizer: I googled her a while back and found she was an officer in her local chapter of the DAR).

I stayed active in the APA for a few cycles after Pat dropped out, then got busy with the job that gave me 3 years of what I refer to as clinical indignation. And the fiction writing faded out, even though my head remained as full of stories as ever.

I seem to be like one of those fruit trees that will not bear unless another different tree is nearby. I don't need physical proximity: during the years we were friends I lived in Boulder and Pat lived in South Dakota, and it wasn't until I moved to the same town that my other friend abandoned me. My writing buddies were always penpals.

Nanette is a wonderful friend, but she isn't a writer or artist at the activity level I seem to need in a writing buddy. (And it isn't sensible or fair to lean on her for everything in my live outside of work.)

These days, with email and blogs and other online resources available, having a writing buddy would be a lot cheaper (no wonder the Post Office is going broke, and there seem to be fewer Kinko's competitors around).

I think if I ever want to write fiction again I need to become less of a lurker in fandom and more of a participant again. This blog has at least gotten me back into the habit of writing stuff that isn't work related, but I don't think it is giving me the audience or feedback I need to output the stories.

I also think I'm going to put my novel up on the website, probably a chapter at a time. This may not happen immediately. The novel is intended for a mature audience, so I may need to put it behind some kind of block, so people need to claim to be over 18 to read it.

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