oh, my love, it was a funny little thing to be the ones to've seen.
I just read this quote from Willow Wode's essay Deny The Lie (on plagiarism and especially its relationship to fanfiction):
"Inspiration happens when something has touched you, something huge enough to make you change your patterns of contemplation, or deep enough to delve things from you that perhaps you hadn't realised were there. Inspiration is faery dust-and I'm not talking about the wimpy, sparkly type so pervasive in all the hopelessly-sterilised Disney versions, where deus ex machina is offered for no more effort than a whine and a wish. No, I mean the real faery dust, the primal, undeniable compulsion formed from stars and earth and the blood beating in your veins, the brilliant darkness that works its way into your brain and your soul, rocking your world, shifting your paradigms in every sense of their being."
...my god. I think I just had a revelation: I am wasting myself. I am wasting my life and my talents on things that in the Grand Scheme of Things utterly cease to matter. I could be writing things that are important, things that will reach people, touch them, make them feel- and I'm writing horrible, haphazard, useless pieces of fanfiction. There is so much more I could be doing. And I'm going to. I have yet to live, and I'm standing just on the edge of doing so.
I'm toeing the verge. It's terrifying and thrilling at the same time. Fuck, I'm going to be someone. Be someone who matters. I'm dreadfully excited.
"Inspiration happens when something has touched you, something huge enough to make you change your patterns of contemplation, or deep enough to delve things from you that perhaps you hadn't realised were there. Inspiration is faery dust-and I'm not talking about the wimpy, sparkly type so pervasive in all the hopelessly-sterilised Disney versions, where deus ex machina is offered for no more effort than a whine and a wish. No, I mean the real faery dust, the primal, undeniable compulsion formed from stars and earth and the blood beating in your veins, the brilliant darkness that works its way into your brain and your soul, rocking your world, shifting your paradigms in every sense of their being."
...my god. I think I just had a revelation: I am wasting myself. I am wasting my life and my talents on things that in the Grand Scheme of Things utterly cease to matter. I could be writing things that are important, things that will reach people, touch them, make them feel- and I'm writing horrible, haphazard, useless pieces of fanfiction. There is so much more I could be doing. And I'm going to. I have yet to live, and I'm standing just on the edge of doing so.
I'm toeing the verge. It's terrifying and thrilling at the same time. Fuck, I'm going to be someone. Be someone who matters. I'm dreadfully excited.