This icon has never been more appropriate.
Culture is a lot older than art - that is, we have had social storytelling for a lot longer than we've had a notional class of artistes whose creativity is privileged and elevated to the numinous, far above the everyday creativity of a kid who knows that she can paint and draw, tell a story and sing a song, sculpt and invent a game.
To call this a moral failing - and a new moral failing at that! - is to turn your back on millions of years of human history. It's no failing that we internalize the stories we love, that we rework them to suit our minds better. The Pygmalion story didn't start with Shaw or the Greeks, nor did it end with My Fair Lady. Pygmalion is at least thousands of years old - think of Moses passing for the pharaoh's son! - and has been reworked in a billion bedtime stories, novels, D&D games, movies, fanfic stories, songs, and legends.
Each person who retold Pygmalion did something both original - no two tellings are just alike - and derivative, for there are no new ideas under the sun. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.
Link ganked from cathexys. :D
The only thing I disagree with here is the author's statement that fanfic is not art. Because I believe it often is. Every bit as much as I believe the many...MANY stories Shakespeare "stole" from Ovid, or ancient myth or WHATEVER are art. "Art" is such an incredibly subjective thing that people can't properly agree - EVER - about whether COUNTLESS instances of NON-derivative creativity are art. So the statement is fallacious before it's even begun, imho.
Though I do think that at the bottom of it, the author is not making a judgment about "fanfic as art" (and he DOES, to his credit, qualify the statement with "Much fanfic..." [emphasis mine]) but rather he's trying to poke vaguely at the very real fact that many of us are writing some or all of our fanfic to 'service' ourselves - hitting the 'brain-clit' with things that are often called 'cliche-fic' or 'guilty pleasures' or 'wish-fulfillment' - and not trying "to make a contribution to the aesthetic development of humanity".
But regardless...to this article, I mostly say "WORD". As he also says, "There's nothing trivial about telling stories with your friends - even if the stories themselves are trivial."
This all kind of speaks to the thing I recently figured out about myself, as a writer. Just as many journalists would never consider themselves "fiction writers" but are still "writers" by ANYONE'S definition, I do not consider myself the sort of writer who writes "original" fiction.
What I DO consider myself is the sort of writer who writes two things:
1) Stories (fictionalized for effect or not) about my own life experiences and the people around me (think David Sedaris).
2) Derivative stories.
I do not think this makes me a "better" or "worse" kind of writer than the writers of original fiction. It's JUST A DIFFERENT KIND. And I find value in that - LOTS of value.
Why would I ever feel that the apotheosis of my experience as a writer would be to Get My Original Stuff Published? Why can I not be intensely fulfilled as a writer if the sum total my writing experience is to share that writing with the amazingly generous, brilliant, clever (most often) women who constitute my fannish hive? When I get the immediate, moving, sincere feedback that I get from these women - that sort of feedback/knowledge of reader's reaction to the words that came out of my head - how could I ever find something as cold and lacking in human connection as MONEY to be more valuable and validating than that? If I never write anything but fanfiction for the rest of my life, I will never ever consider using my 'talent' this way to be 'a waste'.
Ever.
This is not to say that fanfic writers cannot also be original fic writers and find great fulfillment in dreaming of or actually being "published". This is about me and what *I* want to do with my writing. YMMV, as always.
Anyway.
Obviously when I'm cleaning a lot, I get thinky. Cause I have to occupy my brain while doing physical tasks, I guess.
In other news, Joss Whedon remains my personal hero.
Bleh. I don't want to go to work tomorrow.
To call this a moral failing - and a new moral failing at that! - is to turn your back on millions of years of human history. It's no failing that we internalize the stories we love, that we rework them to suit our minds better. The Pygmalion story didn't start with Shaw or the Greeks, nor did it end with My Fair Lady. Pygmalion is at least thousands of years old - think of Moses passing for the pharaoh's son! - and has been reworked in a billion bedtime stories, novels, D&D games, movies, fanfic stories, songs, and legends.
Each person who retold Pygmalion did something both original - no two tellings are just alike - and derivative, for there are no new ideas under the sun. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.
Link ganked from cathexys. :D
The only thing I disagree with here is the author's statement that fanfic is not art. Because I believe it often is. Every bit as much as I believe the many...MANY stories Shakespeare "stole" from Ovid, or ancient myth or WHATEVER are art. "Art" is such an incredibly subjective thing that people can't properly agree - EVER - about whether COUNTLESS instances of NON-derivative creativity are art. So the statement is fallacious before it's even begun, imho.
Though I do think that at the bottom of it, the author is not making a judgment about "fanfic as art" (and he DOES, to his credit, qualify the statement with "Much fanfic..." [emphasis mine]) but rather he's trying to poke vaguely at the very real fact that many of us are writing some or all of our fanfic to 'service' ourselves - hitting the 'brain-clit' with things that are often called 'cliche-fic' or 'guilty pleasures' or 'wish-fulfillment' - and not trying "to make a contribution to the aesthetic development of humanity".
But regardless...to this article, I mostly say "WORD". As he also says, "There's nothing trivial about telling stories with your friends - even if the stories themselves are trivial."
This all kind of speaks to the thing I recently figured out about myself, as a writer. Just as many journalists would never consider themselves "fiction writers" but are still "writers" by ANYONE'S definition, I do not consider myself the sort of writer who writes "original" fiction.
What I DO consider myself is the sort of writer who writes two things:
1) Stories (fictionalized for effect or not) about my own life experiences and the people around me (think David Sedaris).
2) Derivative stories.
I do not think this makes me a "better" or "worse" kind of writer than the writers of original fiction. It's JUST A DIFFERENT KIND. And I find value in that - LOTS of value.
Why would I ever feel that the apotheosis of my experience as a writer would be to Get My Original Stuff Published? Why can I not be intensely fulfilled as a writer if the sum total my writing experience is to share that writing with the amazingly generous, brilliant, clever (most often) women who constitute my fannish hive? When I get the immediate, moving, sincere feedback that I get from these women - that sort of feedback/knowledge of reader's reaction to the words that came out of my head - how could I ever find something as cold and lacking in human connection as MONEY to be more valuable and validating than that? If I never write anything but fanfiction for the rest of my life, I will never ever consider using my 'talent' this way to be 'a waste'.
Ever.
This is not to say that fanfic writers cannot also be original fic writers and find great fulfillment in dreaming of or actually being "published". This is about me and what *I* want to do with my writing. YMMV, as always.
Anyway.
Obviously when I'm cleaning a lot, I get thinky. Cause I have to occupy my brain while doing physical tasks, I guess.
In other news, Joss Whedon remains my personal hero.
Bleh. I don't want to go to work tomorrow.