My iPod is called Ithaqua, my PDA is Azathoth, my cell phone is Elsinore, and my fleet of spare hard drives are Vingilot, Apalachacola, Thermopylae, and Phalarope.

I like names.

All those other trashy articles about fanfiction should read this and feel terribly ashamed of themselves.

Highlights include: actual grownups write fic. So do "real" writers. Who don't necessarily stop writing fic when they move on to "real" writing. And they do it because they enjoy it and want to tell the stories. And it's been around for a long time -- before Harry Potter, even! And a lot of the snobbery toward fic looks suspiciously like the snobbery toward any kind of genre writing.

Nobody's Mom's Basement was harmed in the making of this article. I'm vaguely stunned.

Wow, you're right. There is not a single mention of anyone living in a basement. And she got the definition of slash right.

(Though they have Naomi Novik writing fanfiction "as a teen", when she's mentioned in other interviews and the like that she still writes fan fiction.)

I've seen the teen thing re Novik in other places as well -- I suspect it's in some bio somewhere, since she wasn't directly quoted in this article.

eta: I also loved, loved, loved Patrick Neilsen Hayden's quote about "I don't spend a lot of time on fic sites, but if I had more free time..."

I suspect it's in some bio somewhere, since she wasn't directly quoted in this article.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I used to see Debra Doyle all the time on the BetterBuffyFics list.

Debra and her husband are longtime and dear friends of mine, so it was extra-special to open the Living section of the Globe yesterday and see her face beaming at me!

I feel like I woke up in bizarro world!

Huh.

We may get to come out of the writing closet yet.

Should I sign up for the Sports Night Holiday Exchange? Y/N

I vote Y, because it won't be me having to go to any trouble.