Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Pulp

I just learned yesterday that it's fan fiction. I mean, it's not inspired by the original work, it's pure fan fiction, published almost exactly as she wrote it to a fan fiction site. The names have been changed, that's all.

Now... there's nothing wrong with fan fiction, I mean, you get into habit of writing when you write fan fiction, or anything, but... it's still... someone else created the characters, someone else built the world... fan fiction... it's fun and all that, but it's still... a copy. There are rules and traditions within fan fiction that doesn't make it good literature.

But - I am jealous. I am jealous of these people writing crappy books and getting their fan fiction on crappy books published as "real books", and I am envious of their success. The older I get and the less successful my life seems to be, the more jealous I get.

I know I should think about such things like that this author is older than I am. She was 45 when she became a fan, started writing half a year later and three years later the book was published. And 10 years later she's a millionaire thanks to fan fiction. And it's not well written, it's not well edited, the message isn't worthy... there really is no other merit to the story than that it's entertaining.

Pulp fiction.

I really need to get over my ideals.
People want stories. People want pulp fiction. People want paperbacks. People want to be entertained.
Of course people also want good literature, but... I have stories. I have a hoard of amazing characters. I just need to get over my damned perfectionism and put this on paper, and try to publish it, and if it never gets published, that's OK, too.