I write because for me it’s like breathing. I’ve never been able to keep myself from doing it, even when a lack of spelling and handwriting skills otherwise should have stopped me. When I was four, my preschool teacher appeased me by teaching me how to staple a “spine” into sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper so that I could “publish” my books. I wrote RPF—well, real pet fic, I guess, since the characters were anthropomorphized versions of the classroom gerbils.
The GEBILS [sic] series was a hit. At least with my mother.
I’ve been alive for thirty years. I’ve been actively writing fiction for about twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven of those, depending on how you define “writing.” It’s something I can’t not do, at least not for any stretch of time, and feel healthy.
Three years ago, I read a book that honestly, I loved. I thought the writing was pedestrian at best, but the characters, especially the secondaries, and the world? Wow. And then I stumbled across a site where people were sharing their own stories about those characters and thought, ” I gotta get in on this!”
In Buffy and Harry Potter fandom, I used to be one of those fanfiction sideline people. The ones who read a little bit in different fandoms, the ones who never review. Who are like, “Eh, this fanfic stuff is kinda interesting, but not so much that I’m going to give it my time and energy.”
In Twilight, it wasn’t that way. I fell in love with a character, his world, his worldview. I wanted to know him from the inside out, in the way I know my own characters. In the way I know myself. I poured my heart and my soul and god knows how much of my time into this. I poured my passion and every bit of who I am into it. Because I loved it. And moreover, because I believed in it.
And then people started publishing their fic. That website I was so excited to find at first? Became a conduit for fanfiction to get a wash and wax, an odometer rollback, and go out on the lot as though they were brand-new. And in doing so, those authors, and their supporters, said, “This thing? This thing, g, that you’ve poured all of yourself into? It is not a worthwhile endeavor unto itself. And even though we’ve read you and supported you, what we really feel is that it’s really not real unless you do something with it, like these other people do.”
Honestly, yes. I think P2P is abhorrent. And I think Fifty Shades is the worst possible example of the worst possible practice. But this has never been about one fic for me, or even one practice. It’s so much bigger than that. It’s about the attitude that goes with it. This idea that writing has no value unless it goes somewhere, that fanfiction has no value unless you’re able to take the parts that are yours and run away with them and get seven figures.
And that’s flat-out, fucking, completely, for-the-love-of all that is holy not true. I will NEVER buy that stance. I will fight it until the day I die. I think taking characters that belong to another writer and calling them your own is the worst kind of theft. I’d sooner support someone who stole a car. It breaks my heart that people who call themselves creators would want to do that to another’s creation. It breaks my heart that people don’t see the amazingness in these characters unto themselves, and want to steal them from Meyer. It breaks my heart that others, who ought to be giving those authors words of caution out of their own appreciation for our source material, are cheering them on instead. And to those who would say, “Hey, just choose not to let it bother you,” well, I’m glad you can turn things off that way. I can’t. I simply find I can’t write with a broken heart.
I write because for me it’s like breathing. But over 2010 and 2011, I’ve been having a very slowly advancing asthma attack.
I HAVE to write. And it’s clear to me that this mess is just going to continue and continue. And, frankly, I don’t buy it. I don’t believe you when you say my fanfiction is worthless. I don’t believe you when, by your support of authors who steal, by saying fics are “languishing” on FFnet instead of getting published, by saying that fanfiction work shouldn’t have to be “just fanfiction” (as if any artistic creation is ever “just” anything!), you implicitly, and sometimes quite explicitly, tell me that I’m wasting my time.
But just because I don’t believe those sentiments doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around in places where people are spouting them. I’m not going to put myself places where that line of thinking can poison me. I have been alive for thirty years. If I’m very lucky, I’ll get another sixty. I have too many stories—a few fanfiction, many not—clamoring for my energy as it is. There’s no way I will live long enough to write even a fraction of the things I want to write in my lifetime. I find I can’t afford to have a single minute, much less an ongoing stretch, in which I find myself unable to write.
So I’m reaching for an inhaler.
Because I can’t breathe anymore.