Neos Tackling Fandom
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| Title: | Neos Tackling Fandom |
| Creator: | Lorraine Bartlett |
| Date(s): | September 1993 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | multifandom |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Neos Tackling Fandom is a 1993 essay by Lorraine Bartlett.
It was published in A Writers' Exchange #7.
The topic is kidfic.
From the Essay
The December, 1992 issue of Writer's Digest contained an article by fandom's Roberta Rogow entitled "Having Fun with Fanzines." In this article, Roberta mentioned my zines (Above & Below and Rerun), among others, as places to send Beauty and the Beast and Quantum Leap fiction. I was pleased, since I'd received precious little in the way of submissions to Rerun 11, and my deadline was nearing. More than that, I was hoping to tap into the WD audience of B&B fans who might be interested in reading Above & Below. (I have about 150 copies of a reprint of the first issue which was bootlegged extensively back in 1990 and I've since found almost impossible to sell...but that's another story. I think I only ended up getting three orders out of the perhaps 25 inquiries I received.)
Within a week of the article's publication, I began to receive requests for my submission guidelines. I (naively) thought that with all those neatly typed letters of inquiry I might just get some good material. And I did. I received a poem and a short story that were included in Rerun 11 (published in May of this year). Two others had potential, but by that time my deadline was past - and something that needed extensive rewrites just wasn't going to make it within my limited time frame. Unfortunately, the vast majority of submissions were proof that the "authors" still had a LONG way to go before they attained any kind of"professional" stature.
Most who sent in submissions were virtually neophytes to the writing game. What initially fooled me were those letters of inquiry. Perfect in every way...as though they had been copied - copied from Writer's Digest? Some of the manuscripts were also set-up to professional standards, as though copied from a book/article as well. But when it came down to sifting through the original work of each author it was evident that talent and experience were things Writer's Digest just could not impart.
Example: one author didn't know the difference between a script and prose, and knew virtually nothing about setting up dialogue and proper punctuation. (Alas, he was also the only person to write back and thank me for the time I'd spent editing his story and giving him a few pointers.) Or the author with the inflated ego who said, "Here's my story. I know you will enjoy it and publish it." No, I didn't! He'd written a story with Sam and Al - but he knew virtually nothing about Quantum Leap.
I no longer edit everything that crosses my desk because I no longer have the patience to teach adults the basics of writing - like when to use a period and when to use a comma. And that's what was frustrating. I had been expecting these would-be contributors to have had a little experience. I mean, you would think that of all the people I'd receive submissions from, those reading WD would be the ones working toward a professional standard.
The plain fact is, no matter how many how-to articles a person reads, he/she won't magically gain experience. Writing is difficult. Writing is a profession. You've got to learn the rules of writing and practice them, making mistakes along the way and learning from those mistakes. Just because you want to be a writer doesn't automatically make you a good writer. And sending out a well-typed manuscript does not an author make, either. A real writer has to be able to sit down and rewrite, and often throw things out.
Another problem was that these WD readers had never even SEEN a fanzine. It seems like common sense that you wouldn't send a story off to a magazine without seeing what kinds of fiction they accepted. Why should fandom be different?
I lament the fact that even fandom no longer seems to be a training ground for good writing. There are fewer and fewer fannish editors out there who actually edit anymore. Most of them/you who do edit already subscribe to this rag. The publishers will keep publishing anything they get, and life will go on. But who will challenge these new writers? How will they improve without someone to coach them - to encourage them to experiment? Without failure, how will they learn to succeed? And where will the next generation of good writers come from?