So...fanfic

[transposable_element]

 I haven’t been doing this very long.

As far as I can tell from the “created” dates on my documents I started writing fanfic in the spring of 2013, but I don’t remember now exactly what prompted me to start. I had never written fiction of any kind before, except for a few assignments in school more than 30 years ago. Until recently the only other stories I’d made up were the rather formless narratives that I tell to my daughter at bedtime and during long car trips, most of them tales of the adventures of Ruby the Tiger and the Rockhopper Penguins. (They have not yet been to the moon. I am keeping that one in reserve for an emergency.)

I truly have no idea what possessed me to start writing fanfic.

About a year ago I opined on Facebook: “I understand why people write fanfic. I just don’t understand why they show it to anybody.” Yeah. Well, um…I don’t know why anybody else does it, but at a certain point I started feeling quite pleased with some of the things I was writing and began to wonder whether anybody else would like them. I didn't want to show them to anybody who actually knew who I was, so that meant posting online. And then last May a friend told me about AO3, and I thought “well, that doesn’t sound too bad,” and off I went. I got some positive responses, enough to encourage me (now see what you’ve done?), so I started posting more, including a few things that surprised me by coming out more or less on the fly. I have so far posted 32 works (about 150K words) on AO3.

My husband doesn't know I'm doing this. I have only shown him two of the things I’ve written. I think he suspects that I’m hiding something from him. With any luck he’ll assume it’s an affair.

I started out with Narnia but quickly branched out into Swallows and Amazons (originally via a Narnia crossover) and have touched down briefly in a few other fandoms. I seem to be the only person writing anything set in Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s world of Green Sky, which is a real shame. I blame “Frozen 2: A Synoposis” on my daughter. A mature adult can be compelled to listen to “Let it Go” only so many times before something snaps.

If I’m going to keep doing this I've got a lot of work to do on craft—I’m just beginning to realize how much work. Also, I started writing fanfic knowing nothing about the community or conventions or terminology and have been teaching myself as I go along, probably stepping on toes and/or reinventing the wheel. (Beta? What’s a beta? How do you get one? Will you be my beta?) My new favorite expression is “head canon,” because I’ve had head canons for many things all my life and now I know what to call them.

But mostly, I find this puzzling. I’ve been in and around SFF fandom for many years, and I’ve always been the one person in the room who didn’t write fiction and had no ambition to do it. I have no idea what changed.

By the way, I really am looking for a beta reader, preferably one who knows something about the Anglican church. I know I have only a few subscribers, but if you know anybody who might be interested, you might pass this on to them.

Comments

[heliopausa]

I'm just about a year ahead of you! I began writing fanfic in 2012, and have posted maybe 230,000 words in various places. (Or maybe not... that was a rough mental addition only.)

And oh, me too! re: "knowing nothing about the community or conventions or terminology and have been teaching myself as I go along, probably stepping on toes and/or reinventing the wheel". A bit scarey,when you don't know if you might be mortally offending someone. Things I've learnt relatively recently:
- "gen" doesn't mean "only for children"; it means "not primarily about sex or romance" i.e.gen can be about serious adult themes,but just not those ones in particular.
- it's seen as very poor form to offer criticism, even if constructive, when it's not been specifically asked for. (No, I didn't blunder in this way - but I could have, easily!. Phew. But I'm going to have to go and write "concrit welcome" on all my stories, because for me, it is.)

About craft... I'm a bit wary about when the descriptive (of what often works well in fiction) becomes suffocatingly prescriptive. The Chekhov's Gun rule for example - okay, it works for Chekhov. But plenty of great writers are alive with wild red herrings and tangents and by-paths which lead nowhere at all. Too much prescription, and everyone would end up writing the same book. (In short - I'm sticking to adverbs, no matter what anyone says! :D )

(I'll mull over who would know more about the Anglican church than I do. I know a little, but not the arcana of rural deans and synods etc.)

[rthstewart]

it's seen as very poor form to offer criticism, even if constructive, when it's not been specifically asked for. Gosh, I sometimes wish that courtesy was followed a bit more because man, I'm getting smacked around a lot.

[transposable_element]

Is that on AO3, or elsewhere? I have seen references to conflicts you've had with conservative Christian Narnia fans...

[heliopausa]

That was very weird, the stuff that some person or persons on ffnet came up with. Actually a little disturbingly weird - and anonymous, of course. :(

[transposable_element]

I was also lucky to dodge the constructive criticism bullet. I put a note on a couple of the first things I posted saying that I was "interested in corrections regarding language, history, and culture," and the hesitant and apologetic way that people offered corrections made me realize that there was some sort of...not quite taboo about it, but etiquette that I didn't understand. So I tread carefully. But if I hadn't realized that, I might have put my foot in it.

Yes, I think the main question about craft is, does it work? I look at things I wrote a year ago, and they're very obviously clunkier than most of what I'm writing now, so apparently I've learned something, but I'm not sure what. I have a book of writing exercises by Ursula Le Guin that I bought because I'm a completist but never really looked at. She's generally not prescriptive about craft.

Re the Anglican church, I don't think what I need is anything very arcane. Basically, I'm dealing with Susan Pevensie's first Christmas after The Accident, and she's going to midnight mass. Any thoughts on theology would be from her point of view, and therefore would be a layperson's and not especially sophisticated. It's just that the only service of the Anglican Communion I've ever attended was an Episcopal service many years ago, and I remember almost nothing of it. (I went because a boy I had a crush on invited me.) I've found a lot of information about the order of services, and even a very helpful video of the eucharist from the London Internet Church (!), and I've just found a very useful article on a particular Anglican figure I'm interested in. It's more the experiential part that I'm concerned about, because I am not religious myself, let alone an Anglican. I'd like to know if it feels right.

[heliopausa]

I have attended an Anglican Christmas Eve midnight service which was very simple nine readings service (the readings being punctuated by carols), with communion, but this was in Australia, and so far removed in both time and place from Susan.

I wish I could feel I'd improved in craft. :( I've been keeping a list of things I'm learning as I go through. (Note to self: read the list and start a new story! Ummm....with a working-class female protagonist. :D ))