I'm glad I'm not boring you. :) And I'll look for the book, thanks.
The request was from an individual -- though there *is* a thriving fanfic community for that author's books, due in part to her encouragement/tolerance. But I don't take part in it, partly because I don't like mailing lists and partly because it weirds me out that it's posted to a list that she reads. Even with a warning, that's a little more in your face than I'm comfortable getting.
However due to fannish interest convergence, people I've met through Buffy also tend to like many of the same books I do, and one of them asked for this.
In the fanfic community we don't talk about the specifics of our work as much as I may have implied -- though more than what you describe, since we don't have pro editors and must edit each other or go without. But since our friends and fellow writers are the same as our audience are the same as our fellow fans of the source material, a discussion of Buffy in season six can prompt me to write about Buffy in season six.
If you think that sounds incestuous, you're not wrong. And that's in a large fandom like Buffy, which has many different subgroups.
It's not universally true -- I have fannish friends who aren't into what I write and don't read it, and vice versa -- but it's more true than not.
Plus I just like to take requests, because writing to a known audience is easier for me than writing into the void. (It's no accident that two of the three short stories I've actually finished and submitted were written to anthology specs.)
And the challenge aspect is welcome -- when you're using a limited universe, and can't get too many steps away from it without losing your readers, if you're not going to just retread the same old ground, I find it helpful to have an outside goad to trying a new angle.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-10-20 07:42 pm (UTC)The request was from an individual -- though there *is* a thriving fanfic community for that author's books, due in part to her encouragement/tolerance. But I don't take part in it, partly because I don't like mailing lists and partly because it weirds me out that it's posted to a list that she reads. Even with a warning, that's a little more in your face than I'm comfortable getting.
However due to fannish interest convergence, people I've met through Buffy also tend to like many of the same books I do, and one of them asked for this.
In the fanfic community we don't talk about the specifics of our work as much as I may have implied -- though more than what you describe, since we don't have pro editors and must edit each other or go without. But since our friends and fellow writers are the same as our audience are the same as our fellow fans of the source material, a discussion of Buffy in season six can prompt me to write about Buffy in season six.
If you think that sounds incestuous, you're not wrong. And that's in a large fandom like Buffy, which has many different subgroups.
It's not universally true -- I have fannish friends who aren't into what I write and don't read it, and vice versa -- but it's more true than not.
Plus I just like to take requests, because writing to a known audience is easier for me than writing into the void. (It's no accident that two of the three short stories I've actually finished and submitted were written to anthology specs.)
And the challenge aspect is welcome -- when you're using a limited universe, and can't get too many steps away from it without losing your readers, if you're not going to just retread the same old ground, I find it helpful to have an outside goad to trying a new angle.