UTTAD, if I can't write original characters? I can kiss my career goodbye. But even with fic, I like original character/established character interactions best. Part of that is writerly ego, and possibly baseless ("Hey, I can come up with characters as cool as their characters, let's make 'em talk to each other!") and part of that is simply allowing the original characters in your head to veer off and play, which I believe Plei just said far more succinctly.

I have writer news: One of my writer's group guys, whose last novel I edited the holy living crap out of, has just landed an offer of representation from LitWest, Nancy Ellis-Bell. I am intensely pleased about this.

Well, she doesn't so much read them, as I force her to listen while I read them out loud. I also read the Bad Fic out to her, which is probably why she's been more nuerotic lately.

Deb! Keen news.

I think that's part of what I was trying to say before. The characters are already there. Fully rounded, waiting to be put into good stories. So, for me, Buffy fanfic, stands or falls on the story, not the characters.

Hmm. Too often, as a reader, I see characterization fall by the wayside because the writer knows that the reader knows the characters, and doesn't take the time to show instead of tell. I want to read about these characters, the ones I've spent time with, not some generic Buffy or Willow or Xander or Fred.

(If you're ever curious, almost all my finished stuff can be found at my archive. Some of it's canonriffic, some not.)

Oh God... hee.

What happens when someone goes to Connexions and learns all about alternate substances one can use as lube. PWP, but funny.

Oh, man. Katie, that's FUNNY.

BWAH! Katie, evil link.

Plei, I am just insanely pleased about Ken and his agent thing. Because I edited that novel top to bottom, not once but twice. I yelled at him, I told him when he was being self-indugent, I went through it word by word twice. And he was angelic; he wanted the input, he listened, he dropped all the "authorly" crap that made his first-person character unlikeable and cardboard and instead? We got a fully rounded view of the character and we started believing in why he's cracked-up and therapying. And it went from a poor man's Portnoy to something intense. That was Ken's doing, he did the rewrites, but the fact is, I'm chuffed for both of us, because I put hours and sweat and a lot of intensity into those edits and the novel had been turned down by nearly a dozen agents before now. And LitWest is a killer little agency.

So I'm pleased.

(pssst, more "Emma, We're Needed" in Bitchy....)

deborah grabien: See my thing if this. What inspired me to write the fic is Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, etc. Not someone I made up. So that's who I write about. But, hey, each to their own.

(I know! I read it. Fabulous!)

A good editor/beta is a gift from the heavens.

UTTAD, I like both ways, in terms of fic. I've got the first two legs of what's going to be a trilogy up at Shrift's site, but what drew me into writing it wasn't Buffy (although she's my Jossiverse main girl, the one I identify the most with other than Giles), but the concept of Slayer.

As long as it's really well written, pure canon or otherwise, I'm all for it.

Has everyone been keeping up with Anna's latest adventure? One of the best things I've read in awhile, for a number of reasons.