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0|0|0|||||Teresa Nielsen Hayden on fanfic|VoidRandom||01:20:24|04/26/2006|%5Blink%3Anielsenhayden.com%2Fmakinglight%2Farchives%2F007464.html%23007464%7CHere on her blog %22Making Light%22%5D she says%3A%0D%0A%0D%0A%5Bq%5DStorytelling is basic to our species. It%92s one of the ways we parse our experience of the universe. Whatever moves us or matters to us will show up in the stories we tell%2C whether or not we have a socially approved outlet for those stories. It might surprise you to find out how many writers have works of personal erotica tucked away in their unpublished-or-unpublishable manuscript trunks. There%92s no good way to get those published%2C but they write them anyway%2C because they%92re writers%2C and eroticism is an important part of our lives.%0D%0A%0D%0AGood fiction gets under our skin. It can change the way we see the world. But whatever its effect%2C it%92s a significant experience. It would be a bizarre thing%97unnatural%2C even%97for writers to not engage with that experience. They always have. I could show you stuff centuries old%97heck%2C some of it%92s millennia old%97that%92s fanfic by any modern definition.%0D%0A%0D%0AOf course%2C it would have to be a modern definition. In a purely literary sense%2C fanfic doesn%92t exist. There is only fiction. Fanfic is a legal category created by the modern system of trademarks and copyrights. Putting that label on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality%2C its creativity%2C or the intent of the writer who created it.%0D%0A%0D%0AThe Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year went to March%2C a novel by Geraldine Brooks%2C published by Viking. It%92s a re-imagining of the life of the father of the four March girls in Louisa May Alcott%92s Little Women. Can you see a particle of difference between that and a work of declared fanfiction%3F I can%92t. I can only see two differences%3A first%2C Louisa May Alcott is out of copyright%3B and second%2C Louisa May Alcott%2C Geraldine Brooks%2C and Viking are dreadfully respectable.%0D%0A%0D%0AI%92m just a tad cynical about authors who rage against fanfic. Their own work may be original to them%2C but even if their writing is so outre that it%92s barely readable%2C they%92ll still be using tropes and techniques and conventions they picked up from other writers. We have a system that counts some borrowings as legitimate%2C others as illegitimate. They stick with the legit sort%2C but they%92re still writing out of and into the shared web of literature. They%92re not so different as all that.%0D%0A%0D%0AFanfic means someone cares about what you wrote.%0D%0A%0D%0APersonally%2C I%92m convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.%0D%0A%0D%0AThis really is a basic impulse.%5B%2Fq%5D