[jboot]

Ugh. I've always thought that fanfic was the lowest form of creative writing, precisely because there is so little creativity involved. Characters, settings, backstory and plot are already in place, you just add your gratifying little coda someplace. Anyone who calls fanfic "literature" deserves to be clubbed like a fur seal. And now a fanfic-a lemon to boot-is a huge bestseller. Gah!

(Before the FR fanfic squad arrives to pillory me, I am a former author of SF fanfic. All of it was self-published in dead-tree APAs long before Al Gore invented the Internet. Good thing, too. They were rank awful personified.)

[JenB]

Fanfic is a wonderful tool to learn something about writing - I call it “training wheels”. If you don’t ever take the training wheels off you won’t get anywhere.

I have no intention of dredging up any of my old fanfics to try to cash in as original pieces. My original stories are so much better. But apparently this book is filling some sort of niche, appealing to some sort of appetites. Not the sort of appetite I want to appeal to so I really don’t care.

[DFG]

I enjoyed reading your post but it infuriated my 14 year old daughter. Writing stories on www.fanfiction.net is her hobby these days. I think the stories are stupid but I am glad she enjoys writing. She took the ACT in 7th grade and scored high enough in English to get state recognition.