Okay, I freely admit it. I've written fanfiction since before it had a name: back then it was just "your Star Wars story" or "your Trek story" or your "Raiders of the Lost Ark story" and Mary Sue just meant you had an Original Character, not the loathsome little creature she (and it's nearly always a she) is known as today.
I met my SO at my second sci-fi con and for years we wrote a fic that went back and forth through the U.S. postal service ( remember we are from the dark days before the internet) -- and let me say, for me and for all of you -- I am so fucking glad there was no internet back then! Holy shit, am I glad, the world has been spared my truly bad self absorbed Mary Sues (and yeah I mean loathsome little creature MS) I came up with because I was a deeply unhappy human being growing up in the middle of nowhere with very few friends and no other way to find members of my tribe of fanboys. Oh, and I assure you, I would have had a very lengthy ED entry, I'm sure.
Due respect to SoIRegistered, but I could introduce you to someone who became the head of the CBS Consumer Products publishing division overseeing the Star Trek novels for Pocket Books, largely because she had done such excellent work editing a number of fanzines (and yes, she published some of my less nasty writing, bless her). I pay the bills these days working as a writer in the entertainment industry -- I got here starting out in comics and trading cards. I got into the TV industry when I was hired by a guy who had been the story editor for one of the shows I used to write fanfic for -- and that's part of the reason I was hired. And hell yes, I admit it -- I still write fanfic and yeah it lives in its own little world over on fanfic.net. I don't update it very often, but I get nice little reviews from people who seem to like it and a couple of them have become my friends IRL because of it. I love what I do for a living, but sometimes it's nice to go play inside my head with some characters I have loved since I was 17 who made a neat transition to the big screen and reminded me how much I still love them. I like to think of fanficing as a game. I give it rules and I try to stick with them -- the characters I play with come from a franchise that is rated PG-13 so that's where I try to keep the situation. I like the challenge of trying to keep all the players in character and still tell my story.
Annnnnddd, having said all that I will also say ... I don't bang on about it on my FB account! I don't bang on about it there the same way I don't bang on about CWC on my FB or my DA account (yeah, I have one of those too). I like to keep my psychoses and their attendant followers (DA people over here, FF.net people there, and you fine folks right here) separate from one another, and don't worry, I won't link you to my other nuttiness, I won't even bore you with the franchise it's about. Most fanfiction sucks, and I don't blame any of you who hate it, my early ones certainly did and I am no fan of slash, never have been; fine if you like it, just not my thing and I've had sex in real life so I don't need to write about that either. The problem with fanfic and the internet is that there is just no filter anymore. Back in the Stone Age, if your story actually gave forth to the masses, it was because it was published in a fanzine, many of these had very excellent stories (one, in fact, was written by Marion Zimmer Bradley -- and it WAS in a slash 'zine -- it was a parody piece and actually hilarious) Fanzines also often had many fine illustrations and they were cool back then. But the crucial thing was that zines had editors and this is what the trouble is with fanfic now. You can hate fanfic all you want or you can have a good time with it, but because the world of fic has lost its editors we are all suffering through the 99.7% of complete shit that's lurking out there. I write fanfic because I have fond memories of the old days and I like the game of it, I write non-fiction in real life and I am lucky to do it -- did fanfic help me get there? Abso-fuckin'-lutely, but so did the first editors that handed things back to me and said "you need to work on this, bring it back when it's fixed" -- it's the exact same thing as my head writer saying "I know where you're going with this, but it needs a tweak".
Sorry for the rant, but at least I wasn't drunk this time, so hopefully I won't hear that my "long post full of crying and butthurt was hilarious" again. But that's what I like about it here, we can agree to disagree or someone can post an opinion that makes you see something from another perspective, and this is a good thread. Thanks for putting up with me.
TL;DR:
Elderly Shut-In admits to many years of fanfic writing and how it actually worked out for her.
