Neil Young said it's better to burn out than fade away, which is good, because burning out is EXACTLY what I've been up to these days. But, on to something of substance.

Earlier this month (I told you I'm burning out) Nancy Werlin, who is always made of awesome, sent me this link: Since You Asked: I'm addicted to Harry Potter fanfiction! (Salon, requires site pass, yadda yadda.) It's probably been talked about ad nauseum in the weeks I've been away from my friendslist but hey, it's never too late to add my two cents.

I read Cary Tennis's response, and I'll be damned: It was generally encouraging! Basically, his response is that writing fanfic is (are you listening, Anne Rice?) not dangerous and that there are many worse things than creativity based around the work of another. What Tennis doesn't address though, is something I put in my reply email to Nancy: Fanfic is more than just writing, it's community. I don't really expect Tennis to know this, because it's something you can't know without witnessing fandom up close. Fandom brings people together who might not ever meet otherwise. I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but when people ask me why I write fanfic my first response is always, "Because it's fun." It's not "practice" for "real" writing, not for me, because I don't want to write fiction. It's not an attempt at gaining fame or infamy because we all know there are much better ways to do that. I like to write but I'm a perfectionist and if I can't write like M.T. Anderson then for me there's no point in writing original fiction. Despite travel costs to cons and the price of books and movie tickets, fandom's still cheaper than a coke habit.

The Editor's Choice letters in response to Cary's column vary from "I'm okay, you're okay, fandom is okay as long as it's part of an otherwise balanced life" to focusing more on the idea that the LW calls herself "addicted" to fanfic. Personally, I think she used that term because it's dramatic and because she couldn't come up with a better word. The letter from the woman who got into fandom because she needed adult mental space while staying at home with two small children on page one of the ECs resonated a little with me because I came to fandom also needing mental space (but it was from living with an immobilizing back injury, not kids). I like to think that I've got enough of a handle on my fandom involvement to keep it for what it always has been to me, a beneficial and creative place to play and meet other people with the same creative interests.

My other thoughts on this letter:

MediaBistro's FishBowl LA heralds the letter as unending evidence of the weirdness of Salon's readership, because a female PhD in her thirties is interested in HP fanfic. One would think that people in the publishing industry would know a thing or two about fandom, but apparently not. Hey, MediaBistro, Jensen Ackles knows something you don't. In his words: What's funny is the network always talks about how we skew to a younger audience, but at the events we go to, the ones who show up at the set are usually women ages 30 to 50. It's actually pretty cool.

Women aged 30 to 50? You mean, like, most of the people at Phoenix Rising? Like most of the membership of the most popular LJ HP fanfic communities? I don't know why, but I'm continually amazed at who the outside world thinks writes fanfic. With Harry Potter one could perhaps believe that it was teenagers. After all, they're the target audience of the HP books. But if that's the case, who do they think is writing CSI fic? Star Trek? Numb3rs? And let me tell you something: It can be damn hard to meet new friends if you're in that 30-50 age range. I don't know where I'd be socially or even professionally if it wasn't for my fandom involvement. Fandom has allowed me to meet people who are now not just my fellow fans, but my friends and colleagues. When I get together with my fandom friends we do talk fandom, but we talk about a lot of other things, too, things that MediaBistro would *gasp* probably consider more normal and even acceptable, like books and careers and our families.

Still drowning in work. I knew 2007 would be like this. I'll try to be better about updating once I finish some fics...and book reviews, and the Massive Work Project of Doom, Vol. 1, and committee stuff, and reading, and some more book reviews, and...

Tags: fandom, writing
780: the king is gone but he's not forgotten

Well, first, writing fic is fun. It's no-stress writing (short of fest deadlines). It's my chance to experiment with different writing styles, exploring different characters, etc., without the stress of having to juggle all the balls of writing your standard novel.

Besides the fun factor, though, is my personal feeling that no matter what happens in Deathly Hallows we will never have a truly closed canon.

Think about it. There are about 135 characters that appear, for however long or short a period of time, in OotP. That's 135 backstories waiting to be told, 135 ways of living and speaking, 135 personal histories that got them to where they appeared in the books. There is No Way J.K. Rowling, despite her verbosity, can completely close the canon, telling us everything we ever wanted to know about everyone we've ever wanted to know about. I have doubts that I'll ever learn what I've truly wanted to know since PoA: the reason Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, and leading up to that, why no one, particularly Sirius, saw anything in Peter beforehand that would lead them/him to think that Peter might not be all he says he is. I also want to resolve the ongoing (very friendly!!) argument I have with psychic_serpent over whether Percy is a spy for the Order or not (she says yes, I say no). I want to see more of Narcissa Malfoy because I think she's tough and sharp. I want to know exactly how one gets a job working as a curse-breaker for Gringotts. The list goes on. There's no way all of that can fit in the books.

Then, there's my personal rule: I like to finish what I start, even if it takes me forever. I can say "Canon-compliant through the end of OotP; does not include information from HBP and DH" with the best of them. Just because X amount of canon exists doesn't mean you have to incorporate all of it into every single fic you put out. It works for TV show fandoms and there's no reason it shouldn't work for book fandoms. Despite the overwhelming RL work load (it's a 2007 thing; I ended up on way too many committees the same year I took on a major writing project, plus my regular reading and work), I do try to tickle my fics every once in a while. They WILL get done (I promise, ellen_fremedon!!), but alas, sometimes RL has to come first.

Lately all I've wanted to do is sit around and watch Numb3rs. That is, when I'm not reading Numb3rs fic. I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR ANOTHER FANDOM. ACK.


Audioslave - Set It Off

Tags: fandom, harry potter, writing
126: hopeful

Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day!

This day, we fight!

Tags: fandom
126: watching and waiting

1. I am not signing up for this year's percy_ficathon because I am still writing the fic I was supposed to turn in for last year's percy_ficathon. I also did not tell the mods I needed someone to pinch-hit for me. This, my friends, is how NOT to be a good member of the fandom. That is, in fact, a really good way to make people hate you and if the ficathon mods ban me forever, I deserve it. I still feel horrendously guilty about it. That's the only ficathon fic I've ever signed up to finish and didn't, even though I thought I would. Someday I'll finish the fic I owe. loupnoir even did a really terrific beta for it. Lately I've just had a hard time facing fandom. I feel like I've come to a standstill. I don't feel like working on my fics, and I can't work on Morality... until after Phoenix Rising anyway. And anyway, I promised myself I would only sign up for two fic fests this year: Remix and Smutmas. I think fandom is fun. I think fandomers are a great group of people. But I'm feeling burned out.

Some of this, I'm sure, has to do with my job. The job I took last year has about ten times the responsibility and demands of the job I had for three years before that, three years in which I produced some pretty good fic but couldn't get that far in my career. Now I have an amazingly cool job and am making a little progress, career-wise, but fandom has taken a far back seat. I don't want to leave. I've been here nearly 5 years and it's important to me. I LIKE writing fanfic. It's fun and for the most part relaxing. Most of what I know about writing and reading I've learned in fandom. Because of fandom, I'm a better book reviewer. Right now, however, it feels like One More Thing To Do. My burnout is leading me to fade away.

2. Speaking of Job, if you've been IMing me during the day for the past few weeks and I haven't responded, it's because Job has eaten my brain. I have a huge presentation to do on Thursday, and I had only about a month to get all the prep work done and the handouts printed. I haven't seen the surface of my desk since January. So most of what I've been reading for the past month have been the books on the summer reading program. I have, however, read Devilish by Maureen Johnson (fun read, delightful concept, fabulous characters, but took much too long to get to the point) and Beastly by Alex Flinn (urban retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with just the right use of melodramatic fairy tale language against the New York backdrop). Now that I'm done with Big Project #1, I have to work on Big Project #2 and then do a reading sprint to get everything read that I need to have read by June.

3. I continue to run according to my training program but I don't seem to continue to get any better at it. I continue to eat less and exercise more, but my scale does not move (although I do have more muscle definition and look a little better than I have). As Georgia Nicolson would say, it is Vair Vair Frustrating. If I had shower facilities at work or a gym closer than six miles from said work, I would start working out on my lunch break, too.

4. Henry chipped one of his front teeth. His adult teeth are in but his head is still kitten-size, so he looks like a little gray-and-white spotted vampire. He's going to the vet on Monday.

5. I saw Blades of Glory because Mr. Cedar wanted to and, well, it was better than The Phantom Menace. It was not as good as the Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean trailers that came before it.

6. Team Brittany! (Also teams Natasha and Jael.) Team Anyone-But-Renee.

7. Are praetorianguard and I the only ones watching the Pussycat Dolls: Search for the Next Doll? Have the idiot judges complaining about Anastascia's "weight gain" noticed that she's about five inches taller than all the other girls? That aside, I want a pink feather boa.

8. If I wanted to get someone a custom-lettered t-shirt, what's a good website to purchase it from?

9. All my reading enthusiasm are belong to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. SOMEONE has the latest Gossip Girl book AND a preview of the upcoming prequel, plus some other books that look pretty fantastic. But someone DOES NOT have an advance of Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer and there will be a separate post on that.

10. I have these in green and I now want them in brown and black. Because you know what they say: If the shoe fits, buy it in three colors.

Tags: 2007, books, fandom, tv

• The Niffler forum at FictionAlley is the place where people can go to find great fics they might not have heard about. And our current team of Nifflers has been working very hard for about four months longer than we told them they we would have to. So if you're the type who likes to search out fics, whether they be slash, gen, het, popular pairs, or rare pairs (as long as it's not NC-17), fill out a Niffler application here and mail it in.
  
  And from heidi8: ( Y'all KNOW you want to write a radio fanplay, yes you do! )



• Good news: I finished the first draft of my Percy fic. More good news: loupnoir is a really great beta reader. Bad news: The fic is a complete wreck now and needs an overhaul, including cutting about half the text. More bad news: It's due tomorrow. And I worked a 12-hour day yesterday, and am working 12-hour days today and tomorrow, too. MEH and ARGH.



• Smutmas fic: Half done. I'll be damned. Of course, "damn" is something I might say a lot of once fasterthanlight gets through it.



• Phoenix Rising: Have submitted one paper, working on the two panels so starrysummer doesn't hit me, wibbling until I hear one way or the other if I've been picked to read my fanfics.



• Morality for Beautiful Slytherins: Chapter 5 almost ready for posting. Chapter 6 done. Chapter 7 in draft.

The other day, one of my co-workers said to me: You know, you seem remarkably calm considering all the things you have to do in the next two weeks, which is even more remarkable when one considers that said co-worker has no idea that I'm involved in fandom. I told her I drink a lot, which isn't true, but I will say that there's something to be said for drinking a lot of water and getting eight hours sleep a night. I think that's the only reason why I am not wibbling under my desk. That, and with all the books piled on it I'm convinced my desk is going to collapse any minute now and if I die my boss will kill me.

Tags: fandom
126: distressed

Some of you are reading me for the first time, thanks to the Friending Frenzy, so I will spare you the Terrible With Raisins Work Rant for another time. But in general, inspired by starrysummer, a little introduction:

Call me Cedar, unless you know me IRL. If you're fasterthanlight you can call me Petronella. Although I was born and raised in Chicagoland, I now live in New Jersey, not far from New York. I am a YA librarian complete with MLIS and all the debt that came with it, and I joined the HP fandom in the summer of 2002, when I hurt my back really badly and was out of work for seven months and was faced with either finding something to keep my brain occupied via the internet or watching daytime television. Read my fics here or here (second link contains adult material).

Sometimes I talk fandom, sometimes YA lit, sometimes my job, sometimes my kittens, sometimes just things that make me giggle. I like shoes, makeup, books, perfume, classic rock, Indian food, October, and Law & Order. I dislike jazz, peppers of any color, camping, driving, and cooking.

I am an ESTJ, an Aquarius, a Dragon, aggressive, loyal, Queen Multitasker of the Universe, pragmatic, and charming. This means I am fun, don't mince words, and will do anything for my friends, but I am also a pain in the ass, egocentric, and I don't believe in regret. I also give rotten advice.

I've wanted to be a librarian since I was four, though my undergraduate degree is in music.

I've had driver's licenses in four states and have been to Disneyland about 30 times, but I don't have a passport.

I've seen every ep of Star Trek: The Next Generation at least twice.

I get horrific headaches when storm fronts move in. Most of the time, I am more accurate than the Weather Channel and feel that I should get a discount on my cable service because of this.

Cast of journal characters includes: Brian (my muse), Gabrielle (my Sidekick...the T-Mobile kind, not the hero kind), Mr. Cedar (the husband), Beezus and Ramona (kittens!), Lily (my iBook), Charlotte (pink mini iPod), and Jean-Luc (the car, a Honda Civic).

And you?

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Tomorrow Later today, there will be a little Fandom Wednesday. What I really need to do is go back and reread HBP, because I still haven't had the time. But for those who are here, please read this post from themostepotente. I have a fascination with the Unforgivable Curses, so her post was some nice FFT for me. But I have not replied because I am still thinking.

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Reading: 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, which I am loving and I think will make an excellent read-alike for all my patrons who want books like Contents Under Pressure and Vegan Virgin Valentine. Also, the new Clique book came in and I think I will stay up late reading it, because I have a weird penchant for YA literary brain candy and the Clique books, I think, are better (writingwise) than Gossip Girl.

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Now: Off to write some fic.

Tags: fandom
780: joker on jack, match on a fire, cold on ice, a dead man's touch