musings on fanfic and why I don't write it much anymore

[chelseagirl]

I'm still on my revisiting old fandoms kick, or actually, trying to figure out why that one show inspired me to write so much. Especially because it wasn't actually my favorite show at the time -- it was something from the past that I was discovering and enjoying the heck out of, thanks to fannish networks, but this was at the time when the greatest show in the history of television was actually airing. Buffy. What else could I possibly mean?

Unlike many of you, I never felt the need to write Buffy, though. I did one Spike/Dru story and something silly about Harmony, and that was pretty much it. I was satisfied watching things unfold as they happened, and though I read some fic, and was interested in venues for conversation about the show, I never really felt like I needed to intervene with canon.

Because of the structure of ASJ, it allowed for a lot more fannish intervention -- since it was about two guys with prices on their heads travelling around and trying to stay out of trouble long enough for their amnesty to come through (because of course they were good bad guys, who only robbed, didn't kill), storylines were pretty much wide open. And episodic television, as opposed to arc television, doesn't leave everything you've written becoming invalidated the next season. (Plus canon had been closed for like 25 years by then, while at the same time, there was an audience.) One of the reasons I'm unlikely to dig up my old Forever Knight or Life on Mars fic to post on A03 is because most of it's gotten joss'ed; when I reread it, I see the situations I was responding to and how the fic was very much of that particular moment. It was my way of being part of the conversation about what was going on in my fandoms in real time.

I've also been thinking about it because I recently went to the first signing event for a friend who began as a fan writer, subsequently did her MFA, and just released the first book of a historical fiction trilogy with Harper!

As for me, I want Peggy Carter back on our screens like burning, in whatever format, but the fact that Agent Carter in its current format is finished makes it a lot easier to fic. Please please PLEASE have her heading up SHIELD during Captain Marvel. Have Steve use the time stone to bring her back in Infinity Wars. Somehow, somewhere, Marvel Studios, please give me more Peggy & Howard founding SHIELD, and yes, please have Daniel Sousa be the mysterious husband from The Winter Soldier. But meanwhile, I can occasionally feel a fic coming on . . . I'll never have time like I did when I was in grad school and single and could steal away an entire day or two here and there for writing. But once in awhile . . .

Comments

[lunabee34]

This is interesting.

I don't know what makes me want to write fic about stuff versus just passively consuming it. I don't think I can even answer that question now that I mostly just passively consume stuff and can only force myself to write fic a few times a year for fests. LOL

I do know that I never cared about being jossed.

[chelseagirl]

I'm pretty much the same these days -- Yuletide and SSR Confidential. But we are academics! With grading! And lesson prep! And conferences and articles! As opposed to when I was dissertating and had a lower teaching load and ficcing was something not-scary I could do with writing when the diss got to be too much for me.

I didn't mind being jossed at the time, because it was part of a conversation. But it's why I won't bother to post most of my old fic in those fandoms to AO3 -- it was of the moment.

Someone "bought" a fic from me at a charity auction back in January and she has been very patient as I a) reread like 6 Dorothy Sayers novels and then b) rewatched all of Agent Carter, and then c) rewatched the first Captain America in order to get into the headspace. And it turns out it's hard to write third person non-omniscient from Lord Peter Wimsey's point of view because I cannot be and never will be as fabulous as he is. But last night I realized that I could write it from Dum Dum Duggan's point of view (it's a wartime fic), and he could observe both Peter and Peggy, so that's finally getting somewhere. Hurrah!

Oh! I posted the first of those old fics to AO3 yesterday and got a lovely comment from someone who's a fan of them from way back. Just needed that one to feel like it's worthwhile, and did not expect it would come so soon, so yay!!!

[lunabee34]

Yep. When I was in grad school, fandom was so fun. I got the most out of it then because I could put the most into it. Once I got a full time job, my fannish output pretty much went kaput; getting a job also coincided with fandom moving to tumblr and other platforms where I'm just not going to follow, so that was part of it.

Yay for figuring out your story and for getting a comment so quickly! :)

[chelseagirl]

Still have to write my story, of course . . . but I'm feeling it, now, so yay!

I sometimes wonder if I used fandom as a place to hide in grad school.

[lunabee34]

I know I did. We were five and a half hours away from family with a newborn and no friends. I had severe post-partum depression, and we were broke. I was also alone except for the baby all the time because Josh worked three jobs. I used fandom as an escape from my real life.

[chelseagirl]

I don't regret it, because of all the writing I did and all the friends I made. But I do sometimes think if I'd invested all of that energy into my career, it might have been the better for me. Because fandom uses a lot of the same circuits that literary scholarship does . . .

I just used to spend so much time panicking and thinking I wasn't good enough. I did have friends, because I'd stayed in NYC, but no long-term partner, just various boyfriends who never lasted seemingly more than six months or thereabouts, and who NEVER moved in with me.* Suddenly I was cut loose from a workday routine and spending a vast amount of time on my own. I glommed onto fandom email lists like a life preserver.

*I had a lovely studio apartment and no intention of sharing it, even if I did get lonely at times. Then I met a Brit, and next thing you know, we shared it for eleven years, before finally moving to our lovely big one bedroom four years ago . . .

And now I have a job that I love, and an apartment that is large enough for two adult humans. So, happy ending.

[lunabee34]

I don't regret it either, but I do regret that I used it to withdraw from my real life and to keep from dealing with some problems in that arena.

Weirdly, I never felt like I wasn't good enough when I was actually in school. I always rocked a classroom, and I'm a good writer. I got a job in a place where my skills were a good fit.

It's only been since everything changed that I've had a fair amount of impostor syndrome and worry about meeting the changing scholarship requirements.

I'm so happy for your happy ending. :)