This is not my beautiful fanfic
Pursuant to a discussion with reveilles, I went looking for Thursday Next fanfiction, and stumbled across this (halfway down the page) in Jasper Fforde's FAQ:
"My thoughts on Fan Fiction are pretty much this: That it seems strange to want to copy or 'augment' someone else's work when you could expend just as much energy and have a lot more fun making up your own."
To which I can only say: "Mmmm....kay. Jasper, have you read YOUR OWN BOOKS???" Because, you know, they're absolutely stuffed full of other people's characters and settings.
::headdesk::
Even more unfortunately, in the process I wandered all unknowingly into L** G*ldb*rg's blog. Um. Let's just say that he's not a fan of our hobby, shall we? And, if I'd ever been a fan of his (which I haven't) I wouldn't be any more. I can completely understand having a disagreement with what we do. But calling us obscene names is just beyond the pale. And to say that fanfic writers have no creativity because they write about other people's creations, when he makes a living writing media tie-in novels? That's beyond stupid.
Anyway. So now I'm feeling all meta. I've been planning to do a 'defense of fanfiction' essay for my Web site for some time now. There are a lot of such essays, of course, so I want to concentrate primarily on demonstrating how pro authors, both throughout history and present day, do all the same things as fic writers, and vice versa. So help me get all my ducks in a row, please. Drop a comment here with any and all objections to fanfiction that you've ever heard or read. I'm also hoping to compile a list of traditionally published non-media-tie-in works that build on other works, in the way that fanfiction does, so if you have suggestions of those, add 'em in. Thanks!