The Heretic Loremaster » fan writing

Welcome to Middle-earth–Now Speak English!

I am jumping through the last leg of hoops in terms of completing my teaching certification, one hoop of which requires me to take two basic linguistic courses. Admittedly, it is probably the most pleasurable hoop to jump through, since it is an area I have wanted to study for some time anyway.
While reading The [...]

Ownership of Fanworks

Recently, on a list where I lurk, the owner made a post banning “remix” stories where an author takes an existing fanwork and rewrites it. And when I say “banning,” I don’t just mean that such stories are not allowed but anyone found writing them, even on locked groups, will be banned.
(ETA: I want to [...]

Fan Fiction Is Fiction

Another (published) author has come out against “fan fiction”: Diana Gabaldon publicly declared her disgust, disdain, and delusion that fanfic is illegal in a series of posts on her blog. Those posts have since been deleted, but copies can be found on Fandom Wank here or in Google cache here.
It is becoming a perennial thing [...]

Open Thread for Slash Discussion

I am opening this post for any and all who are interested in continuing the slash discussion from LotR Genfic. This discussion has been moved offlist since the list is a gen group and the discussion was starting to touch on issues that don’t necessarily belong on a family-friendly group. So that we could keep [...]

Authorial Intent, Fan Writing, and “Asterisk Reality”

It is an oft-cited fact that JRRT created his stories from the languages of Middle-earth and not the other way around. We fannish folk like this detail, but I suspect that many of us who repeat it with gusto don’t think very much about what it actually means. In fact, I’d never thought much about [...]

If I Could Scratch Five Words from the Fannish Lexicon …

Hey, we all have those words and terms for which we bear an illogical (or maybe not-so-illogical …) loathing. Here are my fannish five.
(I should add that this list is relevant to the Silmarillion fandom, perhaps the broader Tolkien fandom in places, but they are hardly representative of Fandom as a Whole, if there is [...]

On Writing to the Fanfic Market

There were a pair of posts this week on the FanHistory blog (here and here) about how to become a successful fan writer. The title of the first post is pretty much its thesis: “Fan fiction, social media & chasing the numbers with quality content (Hint: Doesn’t matter).” The basic premise is this: If you [...]

When Questions of Canon Should Be Questions of Writing

On one of the Tolkien discussion lists I’m on, the perennial question about Maedhros and Thangorodrim was posed: What does JRRT tell us about how Maedhros survived up there for so long?
The answer to that question is simple: JRRT doesn’t. At least, not in any of the books published during his lifetime or posthumously to [...]

On the Term “Fan Fiction” …

I don’t like it.
It’s inaccurate. It should be just “fiction.” The addition of the word fan is not a comment on the writing but a comment on the writer that is being used to project judgment on the writing and set it inherently lower than “non-fan fiction.” This is an unfair, spurious judgment, and we [...]

The Conflict of the Fannish and the Creative

This semester, I am taking a course called Women Writers. Next week’s topic is Rethinking the Maternal, with lots of intriguing readings on how women can balance the selfish needs of a writer with the selflessness of motherhood–or if it can be done at all. Now, Bobby and I have chosen to be child-free, so [...]