The Occasional Deep Thought on Writing

[bugsfic]

I've always said that writing fanfic and 'real' writing are exactly the same except the money part.  The same impulse, issues and frustrations are shared.

I watched a documentary on Harper Lee, Hey, Boo, and was reminded of that again.  There're always the great classics in a particular fandom from a writer who never writes another thing.  In

Comments

[bsg_aussiegirl]

Well, I'd rather one Harper Lee novel than the millions of Nicholas Sparks...

But, considering how much I've written fandom-wise, I guess I am a Nicholas Sparks... DAMN! ;)

You're very funny. Posting your thinky thoughts. Who'd have thought...

[bugsfic]

Yeah, I try to to make any correlation between my overflow of fic and the One Great Work theory....

[akachankami]

there was an ally mcbeal episode where a famous painter gone senile only painted portraits of his wife since she died and was forbidden to show them in a gallery by his son and daughter (his heirs) because they claimed it would ruin his reputation, that they weren't good enough, not to the standards he reached once... i don't remember how it ended but i remember i thought: he won't stop painting anyway because he loves to paint so all the talking is always only on money ._. and that's how you get demotivated in your work (which in harper lee's case is writing)

[bugsfic]

I just hate to think that Lee has actually written something very good, but just not good enough in her eyes and because she doesn't need that money, let's it rot!

[hollywobbles]

I think I may have seen that same documentary. ...One thing I've also heard/read/seen about Lee is how much she disliked her sudden fame -- maybe she wrote again, but just for herself and never published it. And there's always that extreme perfectionism urge, too, which can be sort of paralyzing.

Nice to read your thinky thoughts!

[bugsfic]

And the hangup on being perfect is another thing I see with fanfic writers! I'm not quite sure if it means the creative mind isn't all that exclusive, or if any fanfic writer has the right and wrong attitude to be a professional writer if they just had the right book in them. :D