I became a fanfic writer when I got into high school. I found a show that I absolutely loved and started writing stories about it. Originally the stories were meant for me, but I did write a Transformers cartoon script and foolishly send it off to Funimation in the hopes that they’d use it for the show. Sadly, it was the last season of the show and, even more sadly, Funimation wasn’t interested in the meandering fanfic of a clueless high school student. It was my first ever writing rejection, and it sucked.
But I picked my heart off the floor and continued to write, both fanfiction and original fiction. In college, I contributed to multiple fanfiction sites. I got together with a couple of Doctor Who fans and did a piece for an anthology which we wanted to submit for the Virgin Books line, but none of us bothered to get submission guidelines or submit a proposal and it got rejected (Oh, woe is me). During the writing, I did a lot of reading too. I love fanfiction and there were a number of good stories that I followed with interest.
I never cared for Mary Sue, AU, or slash fic. The fanfic I wanted to read needed to be canon, or as close to canon as fanfic ever gets. I wanted strong plots, character development, adventures that made me feel something, and good writing (even when I wasn’t that good of a writer myself). I demanded fanfic that had been edited and made a passable attempt at readability. And back in those days, there were many a good fanfic author who did all these things.
With those memories in mind, and in desperate need for a fix, I occasionally go searching for spectacular fanfic of the like which inspired my early writing career. Lately it seems I am doomed to failure. Almost every piece I stumble across violates one of my fanfic rules.
The past few years have been unkind. I don’t know if lessons I’ve learned as writer and editor have jaundiced my view or if fanfic quality really has gotten worse. Maybe it’s both. Certainly many fanfic authors these days tend to be children, pre-teens, and teenagers. It’s not my place to cry foul about grammar and punctuation when the writer’s age indicates they haven’t had all those classes yet. But not all these authors have youth as an excuse. Mixing up homonyms or synonyms only holds water for an excuse so long. And if the author can’t be bothered to describe their scene or format their fiction with readable white space, then I’m certainly not going to give myself a headache trying to read it no matter how good the blurb is.
There are a few authors I still follow on Fanfiction.Net. People who have proven to have good writing skills. I even invited one of them to submit original fiction to my special call. But I’m not sure if I can read fanfiction anymore. Trying to sort the wheat from chaff has become an impossible task these days.
That said, I have nothing against fanfic specifically. If it hadn’t been for fanfic, I would not have developed my writing skills and confidence enough to seek real publication. But if I can’t find good quality fanfic, then there’s no reason for me to read it anymore. Besides, as a tie-in writer it’s bad form for me to continue writing fanfic. Especially if I ever intend to write for the properties I love so much.
Sigh. I miss me some decent fanfic. And then I remember Big Finish has all those nifty (and addictive) little audioplays. It’s fanfiction, only official! (and addictive). Still, though, I do miss the good old days when fanfic was (or seemed to be) an excellent way to spend an afternoon.
