Category Archives: Opinions

“Don’t steal my armrest! Quit wrecking my night vision!” (or, Why I Might Have to Stop Going to Concerts)

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I am a music lover.

As I mentioned for one of the seven things about me when I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award, music is both the filing cabin and the encyclopedia of my mind.  It helps me make sense of my life through my tendency to categorize and understand my various experiences according to specific lyrics or sounds.

Music is also intrinsically tied into my writing life, for I can’t write well without it, and it likewise inspires my daydreams, my imagination, my stories.

My love of music was one of my largest motivators for finally giving up on shared living last year and getting a place on my own, for I couldn’t play my stereo at 6:30am since my roommates didn’t get up that early.

My love of music also resulted in a 30km-journey to the suburbs by public transit to buy a pair of high-end second-hand Harman/Kardon speakers.  I hate public transit.  I’m not wild about the suburbs either.  But I believe that true enjoyment of music is obtained, not through earbuds, but when it’s played aloud and you can feel it in your solar plexus and the soles of your feet.

Hence, my love of concerts.

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There were no “Likes” in 2006… (Versatile Blogger Award)

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Blogging has changed since the last time I did it during the dark ages of the internet in 2006.

Today we have the integrated blog stats that WordPress so thoughtfully provides us all, informing me at a glance how many clicks I’ve received per day and what the clickers were clicking on and where the clickers came from, both geographically and via the internet.

We have “Likes”, which on all but the most popular blogs have replaced the standard comments of yesteryear.  There were no such thing as Likes in 2006.  If you liked something someone wrote, you would tell them by leaving a comment and let them know what exactly you liked about it.

(Not that I’m at all complaining: the world is a much busier place than it was in 2006, and comments take time to compose while Likes are quick and dirty.  I’m grateful to know at all when stuff I write resonates with people.)

We also now have blog subscribers, which I love love love, both having them and to be one.  There was nothing more annoying back in 2006 than to have to constantly check your favourite blogs for updates, especially for writers who posted multiple times a day.

And yet, despite all these innovations for tracking one’s visitors, I still have no idea who is reading my blog, and perhaps more importantly, how they’re doing so.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction – finale

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(Continued from Part 1, Part 2 – The Good, Part 3 – The Bad, and Part 4 – The Ugly)

Conclusion

Love it or hate it, fan fiction is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction, pt. 3

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(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 – The Good)

The Bad

We all know that feeling (and, no, the Enterprise smells just fine).

I began this examination of fan fiction in response to two online articles I stumbled across on the subject on the same day: one from Time and the other found here at Flavorwire.com.  I felt inclined to throw in a bit of support for fan fiction given that I started out in my youth as a fanfic writer – something I believe has helped me develop into the writer of original fiction that I am today.

In my first two posts, I reminisced about fun times spent writing in fandoms with friends, and also looked more closely at why writing fanfic can be educational for developing writers, yet why one shouldn’t assume that all fanfic writers are developing writers.

My goal for this series of posts, however, in the same vein as both of the aforementioned online articles, is to be balanced.  So, having already covered the good of fan fiction, we now come to the bad.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction, pt. 2

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(Continued from Part 1)

The Good

I was in grade 11 when I took my first, much-loved, creative writing class.  Except, I don’t actually believe that was my first class.  I think writing fan fiction gave me a far earlier education in writing craft.

I truly do believe this, for writing fanfic offered me ready-made access to what is often the most difficult part of a story to devise from scratch.

Characters.

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In (Sorta) Support of Fan Fiction

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Introduction – Fanfic and Me

There is a saying I’ve heard, generally among those much more believing in grand Universal plans than me, that if you cross paths with the same stranger three times in a single day than you were meant to meet that person.

I haven’t met any dashing strangers of late.  But one day last week, I did three times come across a topic I don’t generally have much to do with: that of fan fiction (fanfic for short), that is, fan-written stories that star the characters and settings of copyrighted creative works.

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