Don’t Write Responsibly
Entrenous
How very odd, the idea that writers, especially fanfiction writers, should be responsible in their writing choices.
No particular spoilers
How very odd, the idea that writers, especially fanfiction writers, should be responsible in their writing choices.
Listen, if anyone asked me for bits of writing advice in pursuing the extremely fun hobby of composing fanfiction, whether they wanted just to mess around or strive to be the best writers they could be, or challenge themselves with genres and categories of writing that are so new that they're a little exhilarating and alarming all at once . . ."make sure you are responsible" would not break my personal top 100 pieces of advice.
Do I think that I, or you, are then open to being called to account for something we've written? Sure, because that's what happens when you put your work out into public spaces, when you make your writing accessible to all comers (or a locked community of some dozens or hundreds of readers). I'm not saying you must answer any objection, or that you have an obligation to take stock and rethink your position when someone raises an issue they have with your stuff -- though definitely, if you're the thinky type, which I'm guessing you are because you're writing and thus playing with words and concepts in the first place, you will to a greater or lesser degree examine your position when that happens at least now and again.
But yeah, you've let your babies loose on the world, and people will likely at some point come calling asking about this or that choice you made. Expect it. It's possible that some of the uneasy material raised will not only provide some interesting conversations, but it might make you a better writer. And that, to me, doesn't mean you nod and say yes and work to someone else's ideal -- maybe you become a better writer because you write against that current, or because you turn the whole encounter into a veiled conflict that makes for a killer fight scene to the death, or because you pooh-pooh that ideal for eight years and then on the morning of the ninth year realize that working through that objection takes you someplace fruitful -- however it works for you, you know?
But I do not think you should in any way write for it -- that is, I don't think you should write for that moment or those days or that long awful year when people come rapping at your door, not wanting to leave, saying "We don't like what you do."
Screw. Those. People. We're talking fanfiction here still, so I'll point out the obvious -- you're not getting paid for this. No one is giving you college credits, or ticking off boxes pushing you towards a promotion because you write it. You are writing this because it tickles you, because it titilates you, because you want to connect with other people who share your very common or extremely weird kink (your kink is okay!), because you can't sleep without writing, because you made yourself laugh on the bus and you wanted to put the joke into your character's mouth, because you tell yourself stories to pass the time on the subway/at church/lying in bed at night when the room is very dark and at some point you want to/need to get those stories on (real or virtual) paper.
Maybe you're writing because you want someone to fall in love with you. That's a great reason. If that someone is another writer, or a particular reader, that makes tons of sense to me. There's nothing quite like the passion of someone writing because they want so very badly for one particular person to read and just see, really see, what they're trying to say (even if this is someone who will never, ever, read that story). Maybe you're writing because you hate something about yourself so much that the only way to dig it out and look at it directly is to flatten and fold it over into something intricate and unrecognizable that becomes a story that somehow gives your mind relief and even some joy when it's completely transformed and shared with others. Good enough. You've done something for yourself, you've been incredibly brave, and you've turned something that seemed so ghastly and consuming into something that's fertile, flexible, and productive.
Those are extremes, granted. I'm not making the claim that you have to write from the peaks and valleys of the emotional roller coaster only -- you might just try writing some because it's so fun it makes you want to wriggle your toes and call up your friends and say, "Look what I did!"
But here's the thing, pretty much the essence of what I want to say: I don't think you should write with hesitation, with fear, with reluctance -- you might write because of those reasons, since dealing with a topic that has given you lots of hesitation is going to give you layers of complicated reaction and various levels of discomfort and denial that might feel awful as you're poking at it, but that ultimately could yield good stuff when you mine it. And you might write about those things -- good gravy, a character who has to react to her or his fears, who sets his life and the lives of others on a particular course because he can't deal with those fears, or who has to bite and claw her way out of a situation despite extreme fears because that is what must be done -- what rich material you've got there!
But please don't tailor or hold back your writing with those impulses of hesitation, fear, and reluctance. This is one of the widest sandboxes you'll ever get to play in -- fanfiction, other people's characters, zillions of scenarios waiting to be born out of the seeds of this chapter or that episode or that throwaway look between two characters onscreen. Don't take other people's potential disapproval as the starting point for something that should instead come from careless bounding of crazy plots or fierce emotion wrapped up in weighted words or pleasure in the refining of sentences, or whatever delicious self-indulgence that prompts you to put pen to paper or fingers or toes to keyboard. Don't write responsibly.
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