Well, who'd have thought that I'd ever get this far? 100 posts. Some frivolous, some serious, and most of them retaining the original purpose of this blog, to reflect on new knowledge, and the acts of writing and reading. Professor Steve, hats off to you -- you're the one who started this great adventure and here I am, still going strong.
I had the interesting (and let us not forget somewhat harrowing) experience of eating dinner with my sister's French Club at a little frenchstyle bistro several miles away from school. (I had to drive there, hence the harrowing part.)If you're ever in the neighborhood and you feel like spending a bit much for dinner, Mon Ami Gabi. Very good food, especially the steak frites.
Anyway, little did I know that a seemingly inncuous conversation starter (Who among the six freshmen liked the Twilight books?) would lead me to use my linguistics research in context! I had brought up the now famous Steven King interview and asked the girls if they agreed with him, if they thought that JK Rowling is a better writer than Stephanie Meyer. One of the girls disagreed with King, supporting my second answer option, that both are good for different reasons. (I don't agree with this option, but I put it out there anyway for the purposes of coversation. I'm not a total dunce when it comes to teenage girls) She pointed out that both are books about relationships, and she reads Twilight for the fluffy romance. "Besides," she said, "I stopped reading Harry Potter after the fifth book becuase I didn't like what she was doing with it. And the end of Seven...See, I think Harry and Hermione should have ended up together," she explained.
"Ah, an H/H shipper!" I exclaimed. She nodded.
Wait. I just used the word shipper and she understood me! We then got to talking about fanfiction, I shared a little bit of my 'language as an identity marker' research, and I subsequently found out that she writes fanfiction, has been writing for two years now. But unlike me, who tells the whole world what I write, and frequently, she seemed rather ashamed of her work. She didn't want to share her address with me and she didn't even want to say what genre she wrote for. Perhaps this was because I intimidated her, (I had been talking the whole evening about anything and everything I could think of, including the history of Alsace after it appeared on a wine-menu) but I think it was something more than that -- I think she was genuinely ashamed of her fanfiction. She doesn't tell her friends about it, doesn't tell anyone!
So my question is this -- why keep doing something you're ashamed of? Why continue producing product that you don't want other people to read and posting it on the online community? I always write to entertain or make the people I know, as well as people I don't know, think and reflect on something. If you're going to create, why keep it anonymous? It's why artists sign paintings, isn't it?
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Spring Update from Athena House
11 hours ago
I have *an* answer for you concerning why people don't publish their work, and are embarassed about it. I don't claim it is *the* answer, but hey!
ReplyDeleteIt is possible people do not publish their work because they simply do not think it is good enough, but they write is because they enjoy the process of writing. The process is more important than the feedback.
It is a question of fulfilment - there are basically three things one gets out of writing. The process itself, the product, and feeback. Someone who publishes has access to all three of these - but only those who write positively-recieved work can enjoy feedback. It is difficult if not impossible to gain any enjoyment from purely negative feedback.
So, it is possible this writer was thinking her work would not generate positive feedback, and / or did not wish to expose herself to negative feedback (perhaps because of a lack of confidence). BUT she writes because the process of writing and the sense of completion is an enjoyable one.
Remember, of course, that before the advent of the internet there WAS no method of distributing your work in the same way. The fanzine was a method, but it was a VERY limited audience, and it was not always possible to actually get your work in there.
Now, anyone with an internet connection can publish. Whether or not this is a good thing is open to discussion . . .
Sometimes - my case, for instance - it's about snobbery. Back when i was an eager fourteen year old and a hopless POTC fan, my mum was horrified at the idea of fanfiction. I got a rant about how lowbrow it was stealing other people's ideas to populate my own fantasies, and that if I had literary aspirations at all I'd write something original rather than hijacking other stuff. Similarly a lot of English Literature students are similarly contemptuous.
ReplyDeleteI admit to being a closet 'fanfic' author, but personally, I don't get this. It doesn't matter about your writing ability, people are allowed the chance to test 'publish' their own enthusiasm and creativity for a genre, be it movie, book or comic, that they genuinely enjoy. But fanfiction is the 'love that dare not speak its name' for some. Perhaps because fanfiction can be quite personal? It reveals your enthusiasms (or borderline obsessions) to the world, after all...
Great topic, Merc - i wonder, is fanfiction more accepted in the US? If you go in the Dickens subsection on ff.net, there's oftern fanfics posted as school assignments - an awesome idea, and one which provokes a creative engagement with literature. Here in the UK teachers don't tend to be that enlightened...