Those of you who follow me on Twitter or talk to me in real life know
that I recently got into a new TV show.
The HBO series Game of Thrones is based on a series of novels called A
Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.
I began reading the first book, (aptly titled Game of Thrones) and
started watching the show alongside it because there are a lot of different characters and places to keep track of and I
thought watching the show would help.
Two seasons later…
Don’t worry, this is not going to be a blog where I go on and on about
how incredible the show is. Although
it’s the truth, and if you’re not watching, you should be. No, this blog is about something I read about
the books’ author. (I’ll go ahead and
call him GRRM for simplicity’s sake.)
Anyway, I wanted to find out a little bit about GRRM today, so I was
reading his Wikipedia page and came across this.
Now, there are a couple of things wrong, here. First of all, this is Wikipedia. That could have been written by anyone. This is why we can’t use Wikipedia as an
academic source. But I choose to believe
the statement is accurate because I know that several authors have spoken out
against fan fiction.
Say what you will about fan fiction; I’m not here to defend its merit. Most of it’s a total joke, some of it’s
downright disturbing, a tiny percentage of it is actually worth reading. I’m guilty of perusing some laughable fan
fiction during those moments of inescapable boredom. And of course I support the writers in the
sense that no one should be making money off their intellectual property.
(One could make a case for Fifty Shades of Grey, in this instance,
because that series is basically a glorified Twilight fan fiction with new
names assigned to the characters.) But
it really rubs me the wrong way to hear GRRM say that fan fiction is “a bad
exercise for aspiring writers.”
I have cringed at my fair share of Severus-Snape-confessing-his-love-for-Remus-Lupin
tales. And yes, Sherlock fan fiction is
nothing more than an outlet for sexually frustrated geeks to create wanking
material out of their Holmes/Watson fantasies, but the thing about fan fiction
is, no matter how bad it is, no matter how much authors might think it
bastardizes their work, or how depraved most of the subject matter is, you will
never hear me refer to writing fan fiction as “a bad exercise for aspiring
writers.”
In my opinion, the only bad exercise for aspiring writers would be not
writing at all. I can guarentee that
none of the authors who post their work on fanfiction.net are profiting off of
the characters and places they’re borrowing.
GRRM certainly doesn’t have to enjoy watching other writers play around
with Tyrion, Daenerys and Cersei, but then again, he doesn’t have to read it if
he doesn’t want to. Hell, if I had
created such a richly illustrated universe and complex characters as he did,
it’d probably piss me off too, knowing that other people were treating them
like action figures for their own perverse fantasies. But the way I see it, it’s practice. If you want to write, then by god, write.
Write whatever you want, write as much
as you want. Write with GRRM’s
characters, right with J.K. Rowling’s characters, write with the characters
from LOST or Doctor Who or Hamlet if that’s what you want. That’s what is so amazing about
writing. All you need is one person or
one idea and literally, the entire world of possibilities is open to you. And for one author to say that writing is a bad exercise for aspiring writers just comes off as extremely
douchey to me.
Like I said, I’m not here to defend the merits of fan fiction, but
rather its existence. For a long time,
Stephen King was my writing idol and still is, in some ways, but his advice
always stuck with me. He said something
like, if you want to improve as a writer, you need to read nonstop and you need
to write nonstop. And I always agreed
with that. We all have the ability to
come up with the next great, epic adventure that’s going to sell a billion
copies and be adapted into a highly popular film series. But until we get that idea, then we may as
well all be writing short stories about Hermione and Malfoy having sex in the
potions dungeon or whatever.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that. This is a topic that’s very near and dear to
my heart. And I want to reiterate that I
read that little tidbit on Wikipedia, so there’s every chance that it was a
misquote or some form of wrong information and if that’s the case, then GRRM, I
sincerely apologize for calling you douchey.
Thanks for reading, guys.
Remember to follow your dreams and don’t let anyone tell you that what
you’re doing isn’t worth doing, if you’re doing what you love.
Beck
