The Fan Fiction Fallacy

I've been sitting on this a while now and it's been really pissing me off so no more. Here I go...

Since I discovered the romance community through DA and Smart Bitches and Karen, there have been interesting discussions about fan fiction and the okays and not okays with it. Now with 50 Shades becoming an international best seller and other fanfics hitting the market, there's been more discussions and comments. And I want to add my 2 cents.

Beginning with the one comment someone will always make in any discussion of fanfic is that it's an unwritten rule that no one should ever ever, upon the threat of death or dismemberment, publish their fanfic.

Oh yawn. Oh bullshit. Oh stick it in your trumpet and blow it out your ass.

Where is this rule written and who said we've all agreed to it? And beyond that: who is deciding exactly what is following the canon of fanfic? And while we're at it, is this in the same rule book that says you need an agent to get published and there's no such thing as a well published indie title?

Fuck your rules.

The rule, as far as I can understand, is that if you decided to write Buffy fanfic and you put Buffy in a threesome with Angel and Spike, that's not something you can publish because there's nothing there that's really yours. It's a total fanfic moment. The characters, world and everything are living in the Joss Whedon verse.

But if you think Willow is the coolest character that ever lived (like I think she is) and you write a story about a red head, lesbian witch with awesome power who is just so adorable as to be painful.... and you name her Carolyn and throw her into an adventure.... is that publishable?

The thing is that I say it is. Just as I say that being inspired by the characters in Twilight and writing a story where you have an innocent girl and a much more experienced, troubled guy isn't stealing canon. For Christ's sake, inspiration is. It can happen on a fan fic board.

It also annoys me that in many cases, people have no freaking idea that something is fanfic unless they're told. Because a story about a woman who was kidnapped and becomes a sex slave is truly a retelling of the Edward/Bella story. Not.

The many retellings of Beauty and the Beast are fanfic.

The space operas that were inspired by Firefly are fanfic.

All vampire stories are fanfic (ask Bram Stoker).

Okay, what's pissed me off so much? Over on DA there was a review of a book and it was entioned that it was a rewritten fanfic and people suggested that DA readership were too good for such stories. Uh, excuse me? Eloisa James wrote her Beauty and the Beast story as House fanfic. It was brilliant. And original.

It's called inspiration.

And over on Goodreads I follow Katiebabs because her book recommendations are often golden to e. We seem to have very similar reading tastes. But she's giving one star to any story that might have begun as Twilight fanfic without reading it while she wrote and published a book called Sleeping with the Frenemy that was clearly using the plot of Sleeping with the Enemy as the plot of her story.

Where's the fucking difference? Oh yeah, the Twilight fanfic had an original plot and borrowed the canon of innocent girl and more experienced guy. Yup. One star.

Here's what I say: bullshit. Judge the fucking books by themselves. Stop looking for the origins of the story because inspiration comes from anywhere. Don't throw stones when your house is made of glass.

And those fucking rules that eveybody is so determined to shove down our throats? Yeah Those are the same people that said ereaders will never catch on the Big 6 of publishing are right to try and take down big, bad Amazon.

How Lori and I Became Published Authors (written from a one-sided POV)

How legit is fan fiction?

I've seen posts that sneer at it; I've seen posts that laud it.

What I had never done was to be involved in it - never even knew it existed. That is until I got caught up in the romance of a new singing group about seven years ago. Heard them briefly on Oprah singing Unbreak My Heart or, as they called it, Regresa Mi. I bet even Toni Braxton wouldn't have recognized her own song! Absolutely beautiful.

I set out to hunt them down. I wanted their CD.

By utilizing my miniscule computer skills, I managed to locate their official site. I lurked for quite a while; I believe I've mentioned before that I'm a shy little thing and I would never enter a conversation uninvited. Took me some time to realize internet manners are vastly different than Emily Post's. Make that vastly!

Time passed and I began to feel at home there. Sort of. Just enough to begin exploring all the different sections and the plethora of threads. Lo and behold! The official site had an entertainment section and people were writing fiction - sometimes quite risque fiction - about these very real men.

Okay, this was new and different, but was it legal? Apparently it was, because it's still there and going strong and nobody got sued.

The stories ran the gamut from purely pitiful to 'actually this is quite good'. English is not the first language for some of these authors, because the men of Il Divo have an international fan base, but everyone wanted to show their lurve.

That's how I met Lori. She wrote the neatest fan fic - The Cheeky Spaniard - and I fell in love with it and with her. Pm-ing and messaging and emails led to phone calls and a writing partnership that I treasure deeply. Even if it did lead to our piece of shit, The Bodice Rippers. ;-) We hope to make an announcement soon regarding the upward progression of our partnership efforts.

For the first time since high school I got the writing bug. And for the first time, I had someone to encourage me. Once I screwed up my nerve to actually post something, I became sort of prolific. I've written some stuff I quite like.

But it was all fan fiction. Does that automatically mean it was poor writing? Is fan fiction the red headed stepchild of literature? Is it even considered literature?

I'm trying to become more mainstream, but I'm finding it hard. Every hero I imagine seems to have bits and pieces of my original heroes and I want them all to sing, lol. I could say those four singers are holding back my progression.

But I won't, because without them, I don't think I'd be writing at all and writing has come to mean so much to me.

Y'all - I don't have degree in anything except an associate's in nursing. I'm not erudite in my posts and when writing I struggle for words whereas I used to just pull them out of a hat. Aging sucks, damn it. I don't analyze a story to death and I will maintain to my grave that good writing can overcome many character and plot defects. Get me to like your characters and care what happens to them, and you've got yourself a reader. I think Lori would agree.

So, there it is, from someone who began their writing career with fan fic and who tends to write those 'feel good' characters in her professional writing. I like to blog (sometimes) and I like to write (mostly), so I guess my question is: is there an audience for writers like us? For a not-so-deep POV and a minumum of angst. ;-)

By the way - this was our early inspiration. ♥