[Crosspost] On writing: Should [you] keep writing fanfiction?

[terresdebrume]

So yesterday on my personal blog someone asked for advice, and then sent the following message:

[…] I’m just having fears over whether I should continue to write fanfics, or should I stop and focus on writing my own original   ‘material’. And I fear that I might unconsciously or consciously copy off the stuff stuff I’ve used in the fanfic and out in my own writing.This really dumb, I know.It’s just.. I’m writing a couple of fanfics for a fandom I’m in, and I’m trying to get down to finishing it, but I’m hesitant because I keep thinking about that. And Cassanda Clare. I remember she was called out for taking the stuff out of her  fanfic and inserted into her own work.. […]

And since they agreed and we both think this may be helpful to others, I figured I might as well answer this publicly.

In my opinion, the only reason anyone should ever stop writing fanfictions is if they don’t want to write it anymore. That’s the only criteria that really matters in the end: if you don’t want to do it anymore (whether it’s because you don’t have fun/time/ideas/etc anymore or any other reason) then don’t do it: writing–whether it’s fanfic writing or ~original writing, by the way–isn’t a lifelong vow. If it’s not for you anymore, you’re free to stop.

That was for the short answer. Now for something a little more in-depth:

There’s this oerceived dichotomy, both in fandom and out of it, between fanfiction and what many people still refer to as “real” writing–aka ~original fiction that people have to pay for if they want to read it. This may sound a bit like a harsh definition but that’s really the main beef that I see between fanfic and not-fan-fic: one is copyrighted and the other isn’t, meaning one can help you make money, and the other isn’t.

Usually (and that was particularly true when I started fanning back in 2004) this division tends to value ~original fiction more, and see fanfiction as a ~stepping stone to this “real writing” thing. This is changing, obviously, what with authors being less and less shy about their fanfiction and fandom roots (there’s a whle lot of fandom history going on there but it’s a bit of a different topic) but it’s still an idea that lingers around writing circles (fannish and non-fannish) so it’s completely normal to be worried about this. I’m pretty sure we’ve all asked ourselves that question and many of us still will, if only because there will always be people to ask why we don’t write “our own stories”.

Here the trick though: everything you write is your own story.

Maybe it’s one of a gazillion Coffeeshop AU, maybe it’s something your friend prompted, maybe it’s your gender-swapped favorite movie retold with every line scrupulously the same, it doesn’t matter. all of those stories are your stories because you wrote them. Which means that they are all original fiction, because no one else would have written them the way you write them.

What we’re really discussing when we talk about how to avoid clichés and ~overdone tropes is a question of marketing. If you use things in a way that seems fresh it’s easier for your product to stand out and for people to notice and consume it (this applies to fannish and ~original fic alike, by the way) but the truth is, even the most clichéd, predictable plot will fit someone’s taste. I mean, look at rom-coms: half the time, you know the plot within the first five minutes of the movie, but people still watch them anyway, orverdone tropes or not, because they like them. (Some people even watch them for the overdone tropes. It’s a thing.)

So in the grand scheme of things, if you write stories, you’re a writer, and that’s basically it. If you don’t want to be a writer anymore, don’t be (you can also be a writer who doesn’t write stories if you need a break for that, really, but let’s keep this simple :P) but there’s nothing that dictates what kind of stories you should be telling.

Now for the Cassandra Clare part of this–and see, here’s the fandom history we hinted at earlier.

As you may know, Clare used to be a pretty prominent fan in the HP fandom around 2005-2008 (ish). Now I wasn’t there for that, but the gist of the story is:

• She plagiarized at least one book in one of her fic (also used a lot of lines written by others, particularly from BTVS, without pointing the borrowings out). The plagiarism thing is theft (different from unoriginality) and condemnable. The other one is…a bit of a murkier area, since a sentence or two is too short to be considered plagiarism, legally speaking. It still bugged people a lot and didn’t help her case. Now, afaik, Clare got banned from FF.net over this, things got ugly between Clare fans/neutral/Clare haters and everyone just got really resentful about the whole mess (keep in mind, at the time I wasn’t in the english parts of the interwebs so all of this is second hand accounts)


• During those ugly years, accusations cropped up about Clare being a complete bully and harrassing other fans through legal means (lawyers/lawsuit threats, this is all off the top of my head an a bit blurry) which strenghtened resentment toward her a lot.


• Fast forward a bit, and Cassandra Clare ended up being (one of?) the first fan-authors to “file the plates” off her fanfic to make The Mortal Instruments.
  At the time fanfic’s rep was worse than it is now, and many (many) people had strong views about what was acceptable and what wasn’t, and for many people profitting off a fanfic in any way, shape or form was Wrong, which meant Clare herself was wrong, which meant more resentment.

Nowadays, there is still a lot of Clare criticism floating around from people who were there to witness the ClareGate, who are still resentful and intent on having people remember what happened–and I believe a lot of the criticism about Clare picking stuff from her fic to put it into her books stems from that

(Sidenote: This isn’t to say that I think all criticism of her is invalid, quite the contrary. I myself have Strong Opinions about her and they’re not really positive at all. However, I feel like the context is a good thing to keep in mind when considering what people say about her/her books and how they phrase it. Also I suspect a man in the same position may have been met with a more lenient attitude overall, but that may just be me.)

Nowadays, there are probably a lot of people who think she should stop writing–hell, I wish she’d stop writing queer characters until she’s opened some kind of wiki article on what being queer is like. But the bottom line is, the choice to keep writing or not is hers. Not mine, not her fans, not anybody else’s, just hers. (Plus from a practical standpoint, she’s making lots of money doing something she seems to love so you know. Props for her on that.)

In the same way, the choice of whether or not you’re going to keep writing fanfic is yours too. If you want to switch to writing that might earn you money, that’s fine. If you’d rather stick to something that doesn’t make you money, that’s fine too–I mean, where would we be if we stopped doing stuff that doesn’t earn financial rewards? Neck deep in depression land, that’s where.

So do what makes you happy, and if people don’t like it, honestly, they can just suck it ;)