Obscure vineyards

[hedda62]

Hey.

Haven't been updating or commenting much, mostly because I'm working flat out to get the book done; have set a goal of Monday to get the last chapter to betas, and I think I might make it. Then comes the rewrite, whee.

In a few spare moments I have read some of the posts commenting on cupidsbow's entry about women's writing (suppressed) and fanfic,

Comments

[swan_tower]

I hope you don't mind me popping in here; the magical internets have alerted me that my post got a bit of attention, and I was curious to see what you had to say

[hedda62]

Thanks for popping in!

I do know a couple of people who have been approached by editors because of fanfic they wrote and posted online, though I think it was less a case of the editors trolling the net and more one of being referred by other people they knew. But I doubt it's a common phenomenon, and I'm kind of glad to know it's friends you're approaching rather than, say, writers in a fandom you read randomly in.

I personally am very bad at approaching people and asking for mentoring. I have plenty of support from other non-professional writers who are intelligent and critical editors, but all of us are feeling our way through the publication process, which at the moment seems like a dark wood full of monsters and pits. Always good to hear that somebody has made it through safely, however. Good luck with your career!

[swan_tower]

I hear you; my relationships where I'm the mentor mostly exist because I decided to help along people who were already friends of mine that happened to be writers, and my relationships where I'm the mentee mostly formed via meeting authors at cons. The latter is much harder for me to make (surprise!) -- I'm just not the most adept little social butterfly ever born.

You can find a lot of good info about the publication process online, though, at sites like Speculations (aka the Rumor Mill) and so on. I have no idea how anybody managed before the Internet was around to help them.

[legionseagle]

thanks for linking to the debate; there's a longer version of this comment to follow by email (since for copyright reasons specific references to your work, my work and the works of others probably shouldn't appear here). I followed the original posters - cupidsbow - quite a long way, since the topic of How To Suppress Women's Writing with specific reference to fanfic is a subject dear to my heart; I think it's behind a lot of the fear and loathing of the Mary-Sue and the consequent pressure not to create original characters which that exerts. And that spills over into self-censorship in original fiction - when writing F. I contintually have an inner-Sue moniotr switched on, not always to the benefit of the ensuing production. And of course it also spills over into how women's writing is professionally regarded - look at how many times we're told DLS was "in love" with Lord Peter (actually, if anything the better view was that she wanted to be Lord Peter - I certainly did) whereas no-one suggests that Doyle was in love with Holmes (or even

[swan_tower]

Hmmmm. I had the impression that creating original characters was the exception rather than the pattern, but I didn't ever link that to Mary Sues in my mind. Interesting. (I just posted a lengthy thing on my own journal about my personal history writing fanfic; it was almost exclusively about my own characters in somebody else's setting. I never had much interest in borrowoing canon characters.)