That analogy goes back to the feeling I've held for years, that television shows are often like Homeric myths--folk tales shared and circulated by people within a culture, with culture heroes and the bardic retelling of stories, each author reworking canon with her own unique voice, giving it her imprint.
***

That's just...so much word.

It's odd though, because I always assumed you wrote pro-fiction.

I've written some historical fanfic (Viking!Luke). I could get away with it because of years of SCA research, and extensive library on the Norse and good reference sites. (Hail Gunnora, Viking Answer Lady!)

I totally agree that media is a religion. I got into fandom at the same time I got into Christianity on a personal level. I also started reading classical and nordic mythology at the same time. (I was 9). They all spoke to the same need. And the cool thing about the net is now I'm no longer a solo practitioner in a world of atheists, but a Solo (and Skywalker) practitioner in church of likeminded folk.

Ugh, I know just what you're talking about re: historical research. I've had this neat-o idea for ages that I've been dying to work on, but it requires extensive knowledge of the thirteenth century -- both daily life and Danish history -- and I'm just terrified to even scratch the surface with that. Why aren't there guides for writers? "How to Write Thirteen Century Denmark" or "How to Write a Nazi-era Story." Would make life a whole lot easier, methinks. :)

.m

Hmmm. Coupla things.

First, and I know you know this already, but just to register my solidarity -- there's no requirement to write pro fiction to be a "real" writer. IMO, a writer should write whatever thing most wants to be written.

Second, having said that, and without in any way chipping away at point number one because I think that's important -- I believe you're more insightful than you give yourself credit for. That is to say, I can't help thinking the authenticity thing is something you're putting on yourself, as opposed to an objective recognition of someone who isn't qualified to say anything outside of a narrow sphere.

This is part of a whole rant I should do for you someday, preferably in a restaurant with a plate of nachoes and some cokes and maybe a few other friends I can irritate by waving my arms too emphatically. But I think a woman can write male characters, a white can write black characters, a man can write about talking rabbits, and another man living around the year 2000 can write about British seamen during the Napoleonic Wars. What counts is being able to put yourself there. You can decide to write about a character in almost any situation, and maybe at the end of the day you'll get some tiny factoid wrong, or not; but what *really* makes authenticity, to me, is authenticity of emotion and pov.

If you live in that person's skin, if you are true to them and the situation -- if you don't just throw up your hands and say, "I'll solve that by having her rob a bank" or "I'll solve that by having an ordinary, non-Buffyverse guy knock out four attackers with his bare hands" -- if you love them and respect their problems, you are authentic. And the character will live. (Which is how *I* spell authentic.)

And thirdly, hey, you never know. If you really wanted to, you could take some cultural myth in the public domain and tweak it. Like... gay vampires at Camelot. As long as they're authentic, well-written gay vampires at Camelot, I'm there. Yes, I am telling you now, Anna of my heart, if you wrote it, I would be standing in Barnes and Noble right now, shelling out good money for ONCE AND FUTURE FANGS. BLOOD OVER BRITAIN. "Mordred was a sniveling coward till the platinum-haired stranger rode out of the east, changing his life forever..."

Hey, I thought of you today while I was listening to a CD in my car. Sarah McLachlan -- Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, which I think was on your list. "I won't fear love..." Somehow in my head it was playing over a camera pan that moved slowly over Spike, who was asleep, until we saw that Xander was resting against him. Sensual yet comfortable, like two kittens in the same box. But Xander was lying awake, relaxed and thoughtful, and the lyrics made this kind of a victory for him. It had that vibe like the series of shots near the end of a movie that show you how all the characters end up.

Ha! It just occurred to me that I can now loop this back to the beginning... "Subtleties" was authentic. If it weren't, it wouldn't spawn these weird images for me when I'm only trying to pull into the supermarket parking lot.

Forgot this. Years ago I was on a list where they were arguing the whole "white people aren't allowed to write black people" thing. One person said that she worked as an assistant for some group that was helping a foreign dissident author. He'd been through hell -- imprisoned, tortured, etc. She picked him up at the airport and helped him get settled in. Along the way she said, sympathetically, "I can't imagine what you went through." He looked at her (apparently he was something of a character) and then roared, "No? But you're a writer! A writer IMAGINES!"

I don't remember who said this, but I always liked it: "Nothing human is alien to me." Good writer words, I always thought.

This is part of a whole rant I should do for you someday, preferably in a restaurant with a plate of nachoes and some cokes and maybe a few other friends I can irritate by waving my arms too emphatically.

I most strongly regret missing E. this year when I think of how I missed seeing you--would love to see you there or anywhere.

Yes, I am telling you now, Anna of my heart, if you wrote it, I would be standing in Barnes and Noble right now, shelling out good money for ONCE AND FUTURE FANGS. BLOOD OVER BRITAIN. "Mordred was a sniveling coward till the platinum-haired stranger rode out of the east, changing his life forever..."

I was laughing my ass off as I read this. {g} Ditto. I'd do the same for you. Once and Future Fangs. My god....

Somehow in my head it was playing over a camera pan that moved slowly over Spike, who was asleep, until we saw that Xander was resting against him. Sensual yet comfortable, like two kittens in the same box.

You're trying to kill me here, aren't you? Oh, man. I actually used it in a noir story as an S/B riff (well, Buffy interiorizing), but I'm liking it here so much more. {g}

If it weren't, it wouldn't spawn these weird images for me when I'm only trying to pull into the supermarket parking lot.

Thank you for telling me this. You make me crazy happy to have put kittenish S/X thoughts in your curly head. I do the woo and the hoo, and the Arsenio fist. (I own my dorkiness.)

{{Anna}} Would it make you feel any better knowing that when I read this: Kirk the only god I shouted out, "I. AM. KIR-ROK!"? If nothing else, you've made me scare the cat. And that's a good thing.

Immensely better. Heh. Te and Bas got me hooked on ratemykitten.com last night, damn them. Were you hooked too? The cuteness--it has no end.

Seriously, I do get what you're saying about research. Just when you think you've scratched the bottom, you find something else and it never stops and the fragile roots of your story rot under the weight of too much information.

Dear god, yes. I was at my worst in Sentinel--I think I researched four hours for every hour I spent writing. I would search a hundred sites to try and nail one throwaway detail--and then waste those details on some truly lame-ass stories. I've actually found Buffy liberating, as a universe I can just make shit up for. I remember hearing about a quote from one of the BtVS writers--probably the much-maligned Marti Noxon--about how felt the same, and that she'd invent demons named after her dogs, etc, and people were snarking her hard for that quote on lists and boards, as if this was somehow a sign of writerly inferiority. Made me want to smack people.

Er, yes. And now letting go and moving on. {g}

*offers you a lemon creme cookie*

Thank you!

I'd just be writing one more book to compete against thousands of other fantasy and sci-fi books out there, and I don't even know why I'd be writing.

"Why would I want to be a little fish in a big pond?" asked the big fish in the little pond who was uncomfortable enough to ask the question but too comfortable to move. eh?

Everybody, especially Koimistress, said what I would've said.

You may hate to hear this, but it breaks my heart that you confine yourself to fanfic, when you so clearly have the insight into the minutiae of character to make original characters that breath and think and act and react.

I agree that historical can be intimidating, but I also don't think that a bunch of research is required to write something that really is living inside you, even if it takes place in some other time/place. A few years ago I read a marvelous novel called Halo by John Loveday. It describes the experiences of a bunch of people crossing the Old West in a wagon train--traveling allows them to be free in ways they couldn't when they weren't on the move, and interesting connections happen amongst them. It's a gorgeously written novel, too. After I read it I learned that Loveday is a Brit who had never been to America and hadn't done any research--he just used what he'd picked up by osmosis through a lifetime of watching and reading Westerns, and he didn't worry about accuracy of detail, he just wrote with what was so vivid in his head. And it completely worked.

And I think you do that anyway, when you put Xander and Spike together and make them so beautifully do stuff they'd never do on the show in the million years. They're YOUR Xander and Spike, you've created them.

When you stop worrying about plot and forcing things to happen and just write about people you feel inside you (a sort of zen concept but it's how I do it and I suspect how others do too), story happens, and detail accrues. You already know this.

I wish you'd trust yourself enough to dare to try it.

All your reasons against are just little hurdles you're putting up for yourself because you want to do this. You wouldn't be telling yourself why not if you didn't.

After I read it I learned that Loveday is a Brit who had never been to America and hadn't done any research

Interesting.

I wish you'd trust yourself enough to dare to try it.

I have tried it before, several times. Unsuccessfully.

All your reasons against are just little hurdles you're putting up for yourself because you want to do this. You wouldn't be telling yourself why not if you didn't.

Well, actually they were just thoughts that occurred to me, but okay. {g}

I have tried it before, several times. Unsuccessfully.

You've told me this, yeah. I don't know the details--what you were trying to do or what you feel went wrong. I respect you enormously as you know and I don't want to seem to be nagging at you, but I'll just offer this as something to think about: there's different ways to think about a project of original writing, and perhaps if you give yourself the scope, freedom, lack of pressure to think about it differently, you'll find you get different results. Maybe instead of saying, I'm going to write a mystery novel about such and such, you said to yourself, I'm going to work with this vague idea of a character I have in the back of my brain, examine her in little increments of time, and let her gradually tell me who she is and what she wants . . . well, something different might happen. After all, no one is forcing you to write a novel, so don't think of it that way. Why should there be any pressure? Play.

Shutting up now. I feel like you're gonna perceive me as standing over you with a stick and that's SO not my intention. If you never write anything else after what you've written this far, you'll still be one of my all time favorite writers.

I am ambivalent about this because I too feel so much of what you talk about. Especially the pull to write pro; I think every fic writer must. But - I'm not saying this applied to you, but it is how my reasoning went - I asked myself if I would want to write an original story if it was only ever going to be posted on the internet, and the answer was no. So I realised that I don't actually want to write an original story at all at this time, I just want the rosette and ribbon for having done so. And I decided that was shallow, so I'm going to stick to fan fic while I want to write it and only try something original if and when I would be writing it regardless of trying to get published.

About the history business I have scant wisdom to offer. I write in the past because I feel more at home in the past. For me, to write a story set in the present day would be breaking with what I know and understand since I don't feel I know or understand modern life. But then I'm pretty sure I don't know or understand the past either, I just find it more pleasant. So the research I do, I do for fun. I would be devouring history books whether I wrote or not.

I will say that if you want to write historical stuff then in my opinion you have the most important talent - the knack of distilling the essence of a time and place and conveying it by nuance. To all intents you are already writing a WWII story with Noir, the only difference if you were to set it in occupied France not Sunnydale is you probably ought to do some research into military uniforms and the like. But the flavour is already there.

So, as I see it, you have options if (and only if) you really want to do this thing:

1. Do no research and write a historical story anyway, settle for getting the feel but not the details right. This is perfectly valid, you would be writing a story not a reference book.


2. Do the research because you enjoy the period and postpone writing till you are ready. The results will be brilliant but slow. This is for the super patient, the methodical, the organised. I’ve never met such a person, I rather doubt they exist.


3. Wing it and do both together, producing a compromise between impatience and your desire for perfection. This is presumably what most people do.


4. Research not because you want to but because you think you ought to. This way lies gloom. A lot of people presumably try this one as well.


5. Procrastinate and postpone the whole thing indefinitely. In this category the names are legion.

Me, I'd probably start with 1, find after a while that I was actually doing 3 and occasionally move into 2 when I was suffering from writer's block.

4 and 5 are for the bystanders.

Great post. :) Thanks for the words about noir and nuance--especially from you, with your own historical inclination, I find that reassuring. What you say about researching for fun makes sense; and actually when I was writing Sentinel, I thought the research was enormous fun for quite a long time, but at times I let it bog me down, and eventually I got more and more ambivalent about it. Plus I think having discovered the facility of writing Buffy (without research, I mean) I'm also enormously impatient now. I always want to be writing! writing! writing! And not reading thick tomes....

But the weird thing is, I did do a good bid of Nazi/WWII research--huh. I'd forgotten about that. Uniforms & the like. You remind me. Jeez. I have such a bad memory. If it's a week ago, it's gone. ;)

I don't think fiction needs to be historically or factually accurate to be enjoyable, however some errors will loose you far more readers than others. I'm not particularly picky when it comes to details, still there are some things that want to make me puke, like, I saw this TS cliche slash fic once which used the Holocaust and a concentration camp as its backdrop and by the summary and author's notes you could already tell that it was going to be truly awful and that the author didn't bother with even the most basic facts (IIRC the summary had fantasy military ranks and warned against "Blair owies"). I have no idea why the author felt compelled to use the backdrop of the industrialized mass murder of millions of people for a cliche boy gets boy slash fic (I skimmed the thing at the time, because I ranted about it and it turned out about as worse as the summary made me think it would), but somehow a fake concentration camp setting for flavor strikes me as much worse than using a fake Victorian gothic setting or fake fantasy middle ages...

There's a difference between writing pro and writing original. I write original fiction and post it on the internet and don't bother for a second about whether what I'd writing is commercuially publishable. If it's good stuff, then you'll get readers. And I'm sure there are people who would follow over from your fanfiction to your original stuff.

And secondly, I look on historical details and other kinds of technical expertise as the reasons why God invented people who know more than I do. Get a beta who knows the period/profession/culture and get them to point out the mistakes for you.

what herself said. Twice.

Brilliance should never be limited to a few. We adore you but there's a huge world out there that should read your words.

Anna, you are such an amazing writer and person. I would personally be in line at Barnes and Nobles to buy your work - in hardback! - on the release date. Don't be so afraid to fail that you will not try. 'Noir' is one of the most exciting, entertaining stories that I have ever read. 'Hanging by a Moment' is one of the best pieces of writing that I have ever read. It's perfect. I am not a fan of slash (sort of lived through it), but even I can read and appreciate your Xander/Spike fiction.

You might be amazed at how many thirty-something women feel disconnected to their own lives. Ghosts. Write it. Writing, even bad writing, is never wasted. - Pam

Ok, here’s a reason to write pro fiction: day job.

No matter how big an BNF you are, fanfic will not pay you enough to give up your day job. Pro fic is a crap shoot, but at least you have a shot. You’re not even in the money stakes game writing fanfic.

Writing good fanfic is harder than writing profic. But selling pro fic is harder – the chances of selling are slim, but that takes into account the whole pool of writers, and nowadays, anyone with a computer can churn out 300 pages and publishers are flooded with crap. You, however, are a wonderful writer. Therefore you don’t start in the pro fic sea as a minnow. You’ll be a trout. Or a salmon. Possibly cod. Anyone who writes knows you have the potential to be a whale. All you have to do is write something that some publisher somewhere will want to buy. That’s the hardest part of pro fic. (Well, that and not procrastinating.)

Writing something you can sell may be the hardest part for you, because there isn’t a big market for m/m slash written by women. Yet. Maybe you’ll make the genre. It’s possible – this week-end, I was at a workshop with an editor from one of the big blousy romance publishers and within two minutes she and I cracked up everyone in the room because we were squeeing about our slash fanfic addictions. Of course, she claimed Frodo and Aragorn were the hottest... but, anyway, the point is, her job is to buy bestseller het romances with beefy barechested men & big titty women on the front and she’s compulsively reading Frodo slash on the side. I write prim little Regency romances and everyone knows I’m completely dysfunctional about Xander & Spike. Two women, wildly different ages, both involved in delivering vanilla het romances to the consuming public, publically extolling the virtues of sexual stories about men written by women. Without the slightest embarrassment.

Sooner or later that’s going to get translated into money for slash.

Anyway, that’s not the point. You’re a good enough writer that you could write mainstream pro fic about anything. A coming of age deranged story. A single woman in Seattle watching paint dry. Fantasy. Science fiction. Setting, realistic or historical details, that’s all window dressing to what you’re really writing about and you’re just fussing. But everyone’s already told you that. If you can’t hear what Herself is telling you, than obviously nothing I say will make the slightest difference, but I still had to get it off my chest because I think your writing voice is amazing and it would be a shame if you didn’t write pro fic because you thought you couldn’t. However, the only drawback to writing fanfic is that you can’t make money doing it. If you love your day job, there’s no reason to try to write pro fic. Fanfic is just as fulfilling, just as difficult, just as interesting, just as creative. Maybe more so because you don’t have to please your publisher. Furthermore, pro fic doesn’t give you the same intensity of community, you have to finish writing stuff you’ve gotten bored with and you have to negotiate with your muse on everything from word count to content and style.

Just day job.

Nonnie

Thanks for your post--you said a lot of good, smart things, but I have distilled it down to:

You’ll be a trout. Or a salmon. Possibly cod.

Because it amuses me. ;)

I have no idea who you are, Nonnie, but you mentioned my name and I like what you're saying here.

Two women, wildly different ages, both involved in delivering vanilla het romances to the consuming public, publically extolling the virtues of sexual stories about men written by women. Without the slightest embarrassment.
Sooner or later that’s going to get translated into money for slash.

This is more or less what I'm hoping will happen with the novel I just finished writing. And y'know, there's a little of this out there already but it's still scattershot. Have you read Laura Argiri's novel "The God in Flight"? If that isn't just a big slashfic I dunno what is.

It's funny, I don't really respond to the term pro writer, although it's the logical antithesis of fan writer, I guess. I tend to think in terms of are you a literary writer or are you a genre writer, and Anna is certainly a literary writer. But yes, it does break down into the camp of: can you send out your work for possible publication in the straight world? And if you can, do you? So many of us don't.

Anyway, that's wittering.

I agree though that if anybody was to write a terrific slashy novel with original characters and a big scope and adventure and romance and all that, and get it published and noticed and break open the whole secret desire of straight women to read about that kind of thing, it will be Anna.

Then Star Trek would be the only one true universe, Kirk the only god...scary thought.

And some say this has already happened. Monothesism, like monofannishness, is a scary thing, my sister. --Ces, posting from work

From your post, it sounds like you're comfortable writing fanfiction because you have a ready-made audience in fandom, and that you fear the "crap shoot" of writing pro. I don't know how to say this without sounding harsh, but read on - there will be much foot-smooching below. You just need to get over it. As was said above, if you can't imagine writing pro without receiving massive notoriety (like you do in fandom), then why would you be writing?

Here's my personal link to what you wrote: I know exactly how you feel. I'm not a writer, but I struggled forever figuring out what I was going to study in college. It cost me a lot of time, a reasonably good GPA (since I ended up floundering around in class while trying to find my "calling"), money, and my parents a couple coronaries each. I said to my mother in the heat of my dissatisfaction, "I don't want to do ANYTHING unless I can be REALLY good at it!!" I don't think it's unnatural to want to be successful, but what it really came down to for me was ego – and ego's closely related brother: insecurity. I didn't want to go to med school and be an MD in some rural town. I wanted to go to Johns Hopkins, be head of the class, and give interviews on National news for the rest of forever. I wanted this as some sort of validation for my own (hah) ginormous brain (ego) and to make my family proud (insecurity). All this without being even slightly aware of where my motivation for success was *really coming from. And hey, if you're going to be a doctor, shouldn't you be one because you want to help people?

Couple years later, I met a charming fellow who I just happened to fall in love with (aw, shmoop) and found out that he had had the exact same problem – but he was a couple years older than I, and already on the road to an actual career. I asked him how he finally knew that his current direction was the "one"... the calling. He replied quite simply that he didn't, but he realized that he could flounder around forever, and wouldn't that just be dumb? So he made a decision – and he stuck with it. It sounds a lot easier than it actually is, but sometimes, you just gotta go with it: take a stand, make a decision, buy that pop CD even though all your friends think it's *lame. Ahem, well... you know what I mean.

Also, re: historical pieces. What makes you think that everyone who *reads your historical piece is going to know enough about the period to pick out all of the minute details? Trust me, the historians who could tell you what the average daily meal of a family in ancient China was are few and far between. Their voice would be a angry squeak in a room full of cheering fans. :) Know enough about the period to make it recognizable – to get that *feeling everyone has been talking about. That nuance. Don't do more unless your story is about that period rather than fictional characters *in that period.

Lastly, and here is the foot-kissing section: whatever you write is going to be fabulous. You can't write a representative story about a 30-year-old woman living in Seattle? Big whoop. We don't read your stuff because you're representative, or u wuld spell al ur wrds funnie and put odd punkchuashun evrywere!!!!!!!! We like you because you're out of the norm – better than the norm. You're an –exceptional- writer. An –extraordinary- author. Why do you think we read, not just your fanfic, but your journal as well? Your life isn't all jumping-off-cliffs and chasing-criminals-through-darkened-alleyways. It's how you view things and, ultimately, how you write them that keeps us interested. :)

You can do it, Anna. You absolutely can. :)

-Roquelaure

Ugh, this got cut off from the top, but to give recognition where it's due:

So, a lot of what I want to say has been covered by koimistress, carolyn_claire, peasant, snoopygirl and herself_nyc - but at least one thing in your post struck me on a personal level, so I thought I'd comment. Long, gratuitously personal reply alert. I apologize.