Discovered another use for fanfiction–sorting out the Chickens among us. *grin*
Longtime readers will remember I am the founder of Chickens Anonymous, a small (two members!) group for the encouragement of writers too chicken to submit their work. Well, yesterday I realized that my fellow member (I’m her sponsor, she’s mine) actually does have a work of fanfiction. No matter what excuses she makes. (It’s for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she wrote it when Buffy was dead, she was going to turn it into a script and submit it but then they brought Buffy back…)
Excuses, excuses, I told her. It’s fanfiction. And useless as an attempt at a script, since the series is now over. (hmm, how long has she been sitting on it, waiting for it to hatch?) So since she can’t sell it–she should post it. And I found her the correct page on FanFiction.Net. (where I have no stories, as they don’t allow anything beyond a PG-13.)
My courageous friend, who survived raising five children, who for the fifty years outside of her twenty-year marriage has taken care of herself and done so rather well, who berates me for “pulling back” when my stories hit rough patches and I want to gloss over my characters’ pain–got a tummy ache at the thought. My brilliant writer friend who has been published, who has wonderful, intelligent reviews on Amazon for a book twenty years out of print, who was hunted down by an editor when he got in a job where he could buy the manuscript he’d read years before…and she thinks because it wasn’t selected from a pile of hopefuls, that she went around the selection process.
SNARL.
She will be published again, if I have anything to say about it. She’s 71, I can’t exactly beat her up. (she might well kick my butt *grin*) And nagging makes her set her heels. But I can remind, coax, encourage, and throw the twelve steps of Chickens Anonymous at her regularly. I believe the one that applies is step seven–Humbly attempted to submit manuscripts despite chicken-ism, and then continue onward.
But first I gotta get that damned fanfic pried out of her hands and posted. And then find readers to threaten into reviewing, fanfiction.net readers are a lot lazier about it than mm.org ones, from what I’ve seen.