Susan, your DH has some sense, he does. And yes, we all need to hear that kind of thing occasionally.

Which, of course, doesn't stop me, at least, from wanting to deck the person telling me. But in the end, this stuff is all useful.

"Sail on, silver girl, sail on high, your time has come to shine...

I like that. You may have found a new nickname I can use on the interbunny.

I've been playing the "If you're so hot, why aren't you published?" waltz in my head. Well, number one, I haven't submitted anything (a short story twenty years ago to a couple of magazines, so at least I can say I've tried), that's why I'm not published.

I always feel a little plebian for bringing the fanfic world into discussions of actual publishing for money, but it occurred to me that a lot of new books get published but people don't buy them. I want to be read, I want people to go "What the hell happens next!" I get that now. I watch the number counters on my website ratchet up and say, "Look, someone wants to read what I write." I recently found a discussion group I'd never heard of where they talk about my stuff. I hadn't felt validation like that in years.

Yes, I want to be the talk of the internet, the writer to whom all other writers are compared--and found lacking. I get burning jealousy when I'm not mentioned in lists of favorite authors. I've just got to cope. Maybe figure out how to get better known.

Most of all, I've got to produce. Someone on that new board said, "She's a very good writer, but slow." That was a kick in the head. So I took a vow of productivity for the new year.

Literary fashions change. For a long time Hemingway has been held up as the model to follow. A lot of people don't like him, though, and their opinions are just as valid. And I'm a huge advocate of the folks who say, "Just tell me a really cool story, OK? Blow some stuff up, maybe throw in some sex, make me keep reading." When they get to the part that says "The End," make them go, "Damn, it's done. Wow."

Connie, that is totally why I can't give up the fanfic thing. Absolutely. I wish you lived in the same town as me so we could both have that conversation with Crush Guy. By myself, I think I blew that. Susan, I can really relate. Because my expectations for myself get screwed up sometimes, too. Because I've gotten so much praise for, you know, being special and continuing to draw breath, with the occasional quip or what-have-you, it's hard to sort out what's real, you know, am I really good, or is this an "At least she has something" thing or are people just impressed by my sentience, considering.. And I basically want to run the world. When I don't think I suck. But I tricked myself into writing this book by "making a promise to a gentleman" to get a little Spikey about it.

Erika, I finally read your article. It's really amazing; and no, I'm not flattering. Extremely well written.

cereal: Fanfic has taught me a lot about plot, namely "Don't forget to have one." I'm being funny, but my stories used to be like that a lot. Kristin, thanks. I thought about not publishing it. I thought was Too Much, even though I don't date my father in it. That was kind of an "Ok, if it'll make you happy. If you don't think I risk enough Painful Rejection..." The first words I said on getting accepted were" No fucking way." So you just never know.

Huh.

connie, I think there are very different factors - and individual needs - at work here.

If the main or immediate purpose for someone writing is validation, then I don't get it. For me, good cookery or providing someone I adore with unforgettable sex or any number of things will produce that. One of the few things that it would never occur to me to look to for that purpose is my writing. I'm not judging, or sneering, or dissing - I'm just scratching my head, because I don't get it. The numbers are important to me so that someone will continue to pay me to do it again, but validation, certainly instant validation, isn't part of my equation. If it was, I'd shoot myself, because it so rarely happens anyway. I write because there are people in my consciousness, and a road they want to travel, and a story, and I want to tell it. That's all. That's my spur.

If people do love it - or are moved by it, like the girl who started my new year right by writing me a wonderful fan letter this morning - that's gravy. It's a bonus. It's yummy and I love it to hell and back.

But as a spur for writing? No. Not for me, anyway.

No, I don't mean that. I did it for a long time before showing it. But that is why I like the Fanfic, besides Munch being the devil on my shoulder, of course.

erika, nope, I meant specifically connie's thing about fanfic. And I get the desire - it's really nice to post up something in Sunday 100 and look at my email a few minutes later and see fourteen responses.

But somehow, the idea of not sharing the original fiction, or of being unwilling to submit the original fiction, because it might get snooted, or might not generate a response - that's the part I don't get.

I love writing fanfic. I love reading a good deal of it; Roz write astonishing and elegant stuff. Her piece on the First Slayer, "Bed of Bones", could be taken entirely out of the Jossiverse and read as an amazing piece of sorrow and incomprehension, a metaphor for female adolescence. Great fanfic is like that.

But it's very limited for me, since they aren't my characters, they aren't on my roads, and I'm very confined by the parameters of a universe I had no hand in conceiving. That's why, when the Simon Spotlight people asked Jenn to ask me if I wanted to do novelisations, I backed away, crossing myself and flinging holy water. I can't do it.

Deb, in completely unrelated news, insent.