For me fanfic worked because it gave a framework to start with and something to push against. My creativity nearly always springs from a question I want to answer, and the canon and accumulated fanworks of a show pose lots of questions so they stimulate me.
But after a while the framework does become too restrictive and my world building builds further and further away from the original until I am writing original fic.
It's rather like starting with chess - very strict rules, very restricted possibilities - and then moving on to proper wargaming - still some rules but hugely flexible. Both require thought, strategy etc but one is much more freeform than the other. The only difference in the simile is that in writing it is the 'wargaming' that is respected while the 'chess' is marginal :D
Writing for me is a bit like breathing or eating or sleeping. It's not..something I decide to do so much as must. I don't even know sometimes if it is any good or that any one will read or care about it. Just that I must write it. And when the muse gets blocked, the story stops, I feel this sense of...being stuck or constipated or at odds. Creatively backed up somehow. I don't have this, and I envy those who do. I had it very briefly for a few months in 2001. Then I got ill and that sense of 'must' has never come back. So I don't think of myself as 'a writer' in the way you can, writing is simply one of my hobbies and like all my hobbies it is sometimes an active one and sometimes on hiatus.
I think the drive to write sometimes is a curse. From my brief experience of it, I tend to agree. But it does produce much better output than my laid back alternative.
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branchandroot
Writing
Date: 2017-06-10 05:15 am (UTC)For me fanfic worked because it gave a framework to start with and something to push against. My creativity nearly always springs from a question I want to answer, and the canon and accumulated fanworks of a show pose lots of questions so they stimulate me.
But after a while the framework does become too restrictive and my world building builds further and further away from the original until I am writing original fic.
It's rather like starting with chess - very strict rules, very restricted possibilities - and then moving on to proper wargaming - still some rules but hugely flexible. Both require thought, strategy etc but one is much more freeform than the other. The only difference in the simile is that in writing it is the 'wargaming' that is respected while the 'chess' is marginal :D
I don't have this, and I envy those who do. I had it very briefly for a few months in 2001. Then I got ill and that sense of 'must' has never come back. So I don't think of myself as 'a writer' in the way you can, writing is simply one of my hobbies and like all my hobbies it is sometimes an active one and sometimes on hiatus.
From my brief experience of it, I tend to agree. But it does produce much better output than my laid back alternative.