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First Lines

I was tagged by @sexxicawrites and reclusiveq to list the first lines of my last ten fics to see if there are any patterns:

  1.    “Come in,” said Sherlock without looking up, getting his pencils and papers in order.
  2. Sherlock woke with a small groan.

  3. Sherlock found the party without a problem.

  4. John Watson was uncertain what to expect when he limped down the sterile hall.

  5. Greg sighed and stretched.

  6. Jack wiped his brow and leaned back, reaching for the bottle of water he had close at hand.

  7. John Watson adjusted his bag as he crossed to where Sherlock was waiting, leaning casually against his motorcycle.

  8. Everyone thinks that it’s only Sherlock that observes.

  9. John paced on the sidewalk.

  10. Jack never really slept anymore.

So apparently I tend to start with an action and a character. Also I had to try to resist the urge to re-read every fic I opened. Oops.

I’ll tag themadkatter13, jazzforthecaptain, chasingriversong and caitlinisactuallyawritersname

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anglofile:

hedwig-dordt:

tygermama:

bewaretheides315:

xcziel:

et-in-arkadia:

those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household

don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)

if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read

I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO. 

seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys

xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.

Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too. 

I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.

I love those kudos emails and I’ve even made some friends from that, so no, not creepy in the least. It makes my day

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Still, [Junot] Diaz admits that writing in a woman’s voice comes with certain risks. “The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck,” he told me. “The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles—for you to get on parity with what women’s representations of men are. For me, I always want to do better. I wish I had another 10 years to work those muscles so that I can write better women characters. I wring my hands because I know that as a dude, my privilege, my long-term deficiencies work against me in writing women, no matter how hard I try and how talented I am.”

For one of the most lauded writers of his generation to say he needs another decade of practice to write better women is no small thing. But Diaz told me that he’s often appalled by the portrayals of women in celebrated novels.

“I know from my long experience of reading,” he said, “that the women characters that dudes [write] make no fucking sense for the most part. Not only do they make no sense, they’re introduced just for sexual function.”

He gave a high-profile example, though he wouldn’t name names.

“There’s a book that came out recently from a writer I admire enormously. A woman character gets introduced. I said, ‘I promise you, this girl is just here to throw herself at the dude, even though the dude has done nothing, nothing, to merit or warrant a woman throwing herself at him.’ And lo and behold. This brilliant young American writer, that everybody sort of considers the god of American writing, turns around and does exactly that. When I asked my female friends, we all had a little gathering, and I was chatting. I was like, ‘Have you heard of a woman doing this?’ They’re like, ‘Are you fucking nuts?’”

On the other hand, Diaz said, “I think the average woman writes men just exceptionally well.” He cited Anne Enright, Maile Meloy, and Jesmyn Ward as examples of younger writers who write great male characters—and pointed to two of his idols, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison, as timeless masters. But he also detects an across-the-board improvement even in woman-penned books that are less than high-brow, especially in Young Adult fiction. “Look how well the boys are rendered in The Hunger Games,” he said.

this quote is complete magic to me (from this article). (via nailure)

This is one of those things that’s so obviously the case that it blows my mind people can still manage not to notice it.

(via warmbrightwings)

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mashtar:

I hate all those “writing tips” posts where it’s like “don’t do this with your character because it’s bad” and “when a character does this it’s bad” and “don’t write like this because it’s bad.”  That’s not actually giving tips, that’s just someone trying to tell you the right or wrong way to write, except there actually is no right or wrong way to write anything.  It just screams of egomaniacal amateur writers who think it’s okay to be condescending toward other writers just because they think their own work is perfect.

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Writing a story about a place calls that world into existence. Sometimes, as the author, you accompany it for a while. But even as you write, the characters have minds of their own.

Alan McCluskey (via writingquotes)
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You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.

Cheryl Strayed (via maxkirin)
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awabubbles:

when you go back and read your old stuff like “who is that and can they teach me to write?” hahaha why

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It’s Just Fan Fic…

dsudis:

batik96:

hedwig-dordt:

cleverwholigan:

itsnotgonnareaditselfpeople:

itsnotgonnareaditselfpeople:

I got an email from a reader earlier.  The sender was a lovely young woman who had just re-read my first published fic and wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed it—how it made her feel, how it made her smile, how it made her cry, how it made her excited to get home each night and curl up in bed with it, how it helped ease the pain of a difficult patch in her life, and how much she misses it now that it’s over.  It was a beautiful letter, and my reaction to it must have been visible enough to make my saner half take notice from across the room.  He shot me a questioning look, and I turned the laptop around and gestured to the screen.

I followed his eyes as they scanned each line, saw his lips tip up in a smile that grew broader as he read, then braced myself for the good natured snark I’ve come to expect when my little literary hobby comes up in conversation.

“Wow.” He said. “That was kind of amazing.  How does it feel to be someone’s favorite author?”

“Don’t be a dick,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder.

“I’m serious,” he replied, gesturing to the screen.  "That’s what she said—right there: You’re my favorite author.”

“I think she means favorite fic author.  Not real author.”

“Is there a difference?” He asked.

“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes.  ”Of course there is.”

“Why?”

“Because, as someone in this room who isn’t ME is fond of pointing out, self published gay mystery romance novels aren’t exactly eligible for the pulitzer.” I said, turning the computer back around.

“So what?” he shrugged, “Something you wrote inspired a stranger to sit down write what it meant to them and send it to you.  A lot of total strangers, as a matter of fact.  You write, people read it and react.  That makes you an author.”

“Huh.” I said, very eloquently, then got up and went into the kitchen to start dinner.

Hours later, sitting down to reply to the letter in question I find myself writing this post instead.  Because here’s the thing: That wonderfully crazy man who lives in my house is right.  (But please don’t tell him I said that)

From the moment I realized that letters made up words and words made up sentences and sentences made up worlds that were mine to explore any time I wanted to I’ve been a reader.  I have fallen in love with perfect phrases and epic stories and countless characters pressed between the pages of the thousands of books I’ve read in my life so far—and sitting down to string together those same 26 letters into tens of thousands of words of stories I felt needed telling?  That makes me an author.

I have adored the work of countless authors in numerous genres, and the world of fan fic is no exception.  I have admired and cherished and savored the words of talented writers whose work is no less legitimate for the fact that their names include random keyboard characters and their words don’t live on bound paper on a shelf.  

It’s not JUST fan fic.  It’s literature.  It’s published.  It’s read.  It’s loved.

It matters.

Thanks to all of my favorite authors for every word on every page on every screen that I’ve ever loved. 

Reblog for the sweet anon who asked me if I thought fanfic was as important as “real” fiction. Hope this answers your question. 🙂

Thanks for reading my work, so happy you’re enjoying In The Library!

Read this. Take it to heart. REMEMBER IT.

Comments are the best

They really are. Anything that manages to touch another person, make their life – their day, a particular minute – better is invaluable.

“Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.  Although our
productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than
any other literary corporation in this world, no species of composition
has been so much decried. … There seems almost a general wish of
decrying the capacity and under-valuing the labour of the novelist, and
of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to
recommend them.“

–Jane Austen, defending that most reviled of genres: the novel.

As Joanna Russ says in How to Suppress Women’s Writing, “Jane Austen … worked (as some critics tend to forget) in a genre that had been dominated by women for a century and one that was looked down upon as trash, a position that may have given her considerable artistic freedom.”

This is us, now. This is fanfic.

Russ also writes that “women always write in the vernacular.  Not
strictly true, and yet it explains a lot.  It certainly explains letters
and diaries. … It explains why so many wrote ghost stories in the
nineteenth century and still write them.”

As I’ve said before, what is more vernacular in the 21st century than ephemeral, fannish internet porn? This is us. We are part of the long tradition of women writing and being told their writing is not real and does not matter, that the things we love and value are worthless and foolish, for so long that we even begin to believe it.

Our work is real work. Our writing is real writing. Our stories matter. Our community matters. We are here, together, doing this thing. This is real life. This counts. If you write something on the internet, you write it in real life.

Fanfic matters. Fanfic is literature. Fanfic is literature that breaks the bounds printing technology and capitalism once imposed on the wide distribution of the written word. Copyright law, royalties, the logistics of producing and selling paperback books, none of those can touch the heart of what a story is. None of those make your story any less a real story that can really touch another person.

If anyone tries to tell you different, you can tell them Jane Austen begs to differ.