neil-gaiman:

Okay. I googled. This is what I found - a collection of quotes by me on fanfiction. For the curious, or at least, for the dozen or so people who ask each day…

rocking-horse:

All quotes are taken from Neil’s website,

 Exhibit A

Do you read any fanfiction? I’ve noticed your somewhat-professed interest in anime, and fanfiction is a pretty prevalent subset of anime fandom, and fiction = writing, so it kind of all connects upon itself, leading back to you. If so, what are some of your favorites? 

Also, do you think writing fanfiction is useful for honing writing skills(as your characters are already established and you’re given somewhat rigid specifications), or not useful(because of the previous parenthetical aside, and because that gives you less room to be truly creative)? 


Er, no, I don’t read fanfiction. 

I think that all writing is useful for honing writing skills. I think you get better as a writer by writing, and whether that means that you’re writing a singularly deep and moving novel about the pain or pleasure of modern existence or you’re writing Smeagol-Gollum slash you’re still putting one damn word after another and learning as a writer. 

(I just made that up. I imagine it would go something like: “Oh, the preciouss, we takes it our handssses and we rubs it and touchess it, gollum….no, Smeagol musst not touch the preciousss, the master said only he can touch the precioussss…. bad masster, he doess not know the precious like we does, no, gollum, and we wants it, we wants it hard in our handses, yesss…” etc etc) 

 

Exhibit B

To be honest, I don’t really have much of an opinion on fan fiction. I don’t actually have much of an opinion on people using my characters in fan fiction. For that matter I barely have an opinion on “slash” fiction (although I still find the idea of Good Omens slash fiction fairly mindboggling) (er, and Knight Rider slash fiction. I think that Knight Riderslash fiction is pretty weird, to be honest). 

As long as people aren’t commercially exploiting characters I’ve created, and are doing it for each other, I don’t see that there’s any harm in it, and given how much people enjoy it, it’s obviously doing some good. It doesn’t bother me. (I can imagine a time and circumstances in which it might. But it doesn’t.) 

Either way, it’s a good place to write while you’ve still got training wheels on - someone else’s character or worlds. I remember, as a nine-year-old, writing a Conan-meets-some-Ken-Bulmer-sword-and-sorcery-characters. And it’s fun to head over into someone else’s playground: I’ve written several stories over the years set in other people’s worlds (including an episode of Babylon 5); and if I don’t miss the deadline, I’m meant to be writing a Sherlock-Holmes-meets-the-Chulhu-mythos story very soon. 

I do understand that there are grey areas, and I think of fan fiction as existing in them. I know authors who love fan fiction based on their stuff. I know authors who have formally attempted to stamp it out. I’m just sort of [shrug] about it. 

I don’t honestly mind if you stick (for example) Shadow or the Marquis De Carabas into a story intended for your friends, and not for commercial exploitation. I’d rather you put a note at the end saying who the characters belonged to, which most fan fiction people seem pretty good about doing anyway. But I’d hope you’d see it as a privilege and not a right. 

(On a similar subject: Every now and then someone wins a local short story competition using a story or plot of mine, and I hear about it (often when they send me embarrassed notes, years later) and I try not to grin, and to look angry, but I haven’t managed it yet. I keep meaning to tell Marv Wolfman that I won a school essay competition when I was twelve with a horror-comic plot of his….)

Exhibit C 

What are your thoughts about fan fiction? Based on your work or in general? Written solely for one’s own personal pleasure or posted on the internet? Would you say that an established author who writes something based on another author’s work (such as your own visit to H.P. Lovecraft’s world) is participating in “fan fiction”, or is it a different phenomenon? 
-Joanna 

I don’t have much of an opinion about fan fiction. And I’m not sure where the line gets drawn — you could say that any Batman fan writing a Batman comic is writing fan fiction. 

As long as nobody’s making money from it that should be an author or creator’s, I don’t mind it. And I think it does a lot of good. 

Exhibit D

Hey Neil. 

 I’ve read that you allow fan fiction of your works, and I was curious as to why? Most authors don’t allow fanfic because of concern for losing their rights. 

Thanks. 

domynoe 


Why? Because fan fiction is fan fiction. I don’t believe I’ll lose my rights to my characters and books if I allow/fail to prevent/turn a blind eye to people writing say Neverwhere fiction, as long as those people aren’t, say, trying to sell books with my characters in. I don’t read it (and that way no-one has to wonder whether I stole the plot of something from their fanfic). 

I don’t think my attitude on this is particularly uncommon among authors — I noticed the other day that JK Rowling doesn’t mind Harry Potter fan fiction. Except for the x-rated kind. (I’m sure there are people out there writing Harry Potter fan fiction that isn’t x-rated). On the other hand I consider it an author’s right to not want fan fiction and do everything the author can to stamp it out, if that’s what he or she wants. It’s one of those “your mileage may vary” things. 

As a fledgling writer, I really wouldn’t spend too much time worrying that people will write fan fiction with your characters in. If they ever do, take it as a sign that you probably did something right and made some characters that people liked and believed in and wanted to write about. Or wanted to imagine in the nude. Or something. 

Exhibit E

Hello my name is Andrea bucy I have seen the movie stardust and I intend to read the book by you I was wondering if I could possible write a spinoff book that has some of the same characters and setting. But I wanted to get you permission first because if i were to get it published i don’t want someone coming after me cause i stole their ideas. I am prepared to offer you a deal if the book does sell i will offer you royalties of 60/40 50/50 or 40/60 i don’t write just for money but i realize that for some people like Jane Austen do and did go along in life and pay for many things by the money they make from their books. So i am asking you if we can maybe make a contract that says you have given me permission, only if you do give me permission, to use your ideas and work in my story and you will get credit for it.Pleas get back to me.

I’m not really sure where to start on this one. If you want to write fan fiction, you can. I don’t mind. Sequels and prequels and meetings and pairings and what have you. You can put it up on the web. But you can’t publish it commercially. You need to stay on the non-commercial side of the street, which means you can’t sell it, not even if, like Jane Austen, you’re in it for the big bucks. Otherwise bad things would happen, involving lawyers from publishers and lawyers from movie studios, and your week would be ruined. Trust me on this.

Exhibit F 

Dear Mr. Neil Gaiman: I wrote you once before (about what I cannot remember) and you are possibly the only author I’ve ever seen to actually take such a personal level with his/her readers. Thank you for that—now, to my M.O.: I am writing about a short story I plan on writing for my AP English course, and I know I want to expand upon that idea if it fleshes out the way I hope it will—however, it is (most grotesquely) a metafiction loosely based on AMERICAN GODS. I suppose I am asking for your blessing, and wanting to know if I get it published in my school’s literary arts magazine—is this plagiarism? Would it upset you to know a girl somewhere in the Midwest is taking characters you slaved over and gleefully bending them to her will? (I would, of course, give you credit for the original work.)

Considering your possible response to the previous question, I also wanted to know, in general, how do you feel about metafiction and its lesser appreciated (and usually for good reason—usually) cousin, fanfiction? Giggling teenaged writers aside, do you believe books like GRENDEL and ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDERSTERN ARE DEAD, ect. are as valid as totally new ideas? Or is it more intellectual to delve into the facets of existing work to find something new-ish? Do you think it fair for Anne Rice to become upset by her fans continuing the stories of Louis and Lestat where she left off in their own, amateur fictions? And how would you feel if you stumbled across a hypertext morass of misplaced modifiers and conjecture, detailing parts of characterization you did not state in your works? (I’ll have you know there are currently 220 fanfictions on “fanfiction.net” devoted to the SANDMAN series alone—Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes only beats you by two works.)I wanted your opinion as you are the inspiration for my work-in-mind (tenetively taken from Sam or Jaquel’s point of view—not directly detailing Shadow’s journey, but occuring within and around it, I suppose). Thank you for your time. Well, here goes nothing—I’m hitting SEND now. 

No, I don’t mind. Have fun with it. 

The last time I was foolish enough to say anything at all about fanfiction, a paragraph, taken out of context, was widely quoted on websites, and I got several hundred e-mails taking me to task for not understanding, appreciating or acknowledging that writing fanfiction was the highest and noblest aspiration of mankind. (I think I told someone who asked if writing fanfiction would be good for “honing writing skills” that of course it was, but if that was what he was writing for, he’d have to start writing his own stuff eventually. This was, I was told at length and by many many people, a terrible thing to say.) 

So… yes, I think that playing with other people’s ideas and work is a perfectly valid way to make art. I also think it’s much wiser and safer to do it with ideas and work that are comfortably in the public domain if you want your work to be seen professionally. 

Beyond that, go and read http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/02/long-occasionally-frustrating.asp and http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/02/you-know-i-should-know-better-than-to.asp . Which taken together are pretty much all I have to say on the subject, and include a paragraph of Gollum/Smeagol slash. 

neil-gaiman:

I’ve seem to be hitting writer’s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don’t turn in anything because i’m never really satisfied with anything i do. all my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once i write it down. How do you get pass writers block?

 whimsyrachy

You turn off your inner critic. You do not listen to your inner police force. You ignore the little voices that tell you that it’s all stupid, and you keep going.

Your grade isn’t suffering because your writing is bad, it’s suffering because you aren’t finishing things and handing them in. 

So, finish them and hand them in. Even if a story’s lousy, you’ll learn something from it that will be useful as a writer, even if it’s just “don’t do that again”.

You’re always going to be dissatisfied with what you write. That’s part of being human. In our heads, stories are perfect, flawless, glittering, magical. Then we start to put them down on paper, one unsatisfactory word at a time. And each time our inner critics tell us that it’s a rotten idea and we should abandon it.

If you’re going to write, ignore your inner critic, while you’re writing. Do whatever you can to finish. Know that anything can be fixed later.

Remember: you don’t have to be brilliant when you start out. You just have to write. Every story you finish puts you closer to being a writer, and makes you a better writer.

Blaming “Writer’s Block” is wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the “block”. It gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy.

But it’s probably more honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting Stuck. If you’re being lazy, don’t be. If you’re being a perfectionist, don’t be. And if you’re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make it work, and then start writing again.