Fan Fiction Story Translation Policy

I've received requests to translate my stories in languages other than English, in which I draft my works.

At this time translations are NOT authorized for the following reasons:

-- English is my primary language; I am not prepared to do a thorough job of auditing translated works for their faithful duplication of the original work.

-- I am not prepared to audit the translators for performance if more than one request is made for a single non-English language.

-- Translators' work is voluntary and uncompensated, and therefore completely at the whim of the translator; I cannot assure that translation work will be completed fully and on a timely basis for readers of my work.

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience this causes my readers whose first language is not English.

Thank you for understanding.

Book Club: Ulysses, by James Joyce

I'm participating in the 1Book140 book club reading of Ulysses by James Joyce. This is a massive undertaking, in part because the book is so dense and chewy, and in part because there's so much material out there to read about this classic.
[Note: 1book140 is a monthly online book club hosted by Jeff Howe and The Atlantic. The November 2011 selection is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. More about the book club's launch at this link. To join the book club (whether you choose to read Ulysses or not), use this link.]
I expect to write from time to time about Ulysses and the experience of reading it with a virtual book club. If you have any interest in Ulysses or are interested in joining along with the book club, the following resources may be of use to you:
Some additional resources:
Ulysses eBook - Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4300
Multiple formats available; keep in mind that this work is still under copyright in the EU into 2012. The HTML version does not provide breaks or headings at points where previous Episode ends and a new one begins.
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Ulysses (novel) - Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)
Worth reading for the history, context and outlines, overview of Episodes.
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Ulysses in a Nutshell (Shmoop-based summaries and analysis)
http://www.shmoop.com/ulysses-joyce/
Note the links to Intro and each of the Episodes; each Episode has both a summary and an analysis.
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Ulysses audiobook - Archive.org
http://www.archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook
Note downloadable versions as well as embedded player; the downloads and player are divided by episode.
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Ulysses audiobook - LibriVox.org
http://librivox.org/ulysses-by-james-joyce/
Compare and contrast with the Archive.org version which has near-commercial production values. Also note backstory about LibriVox's production at:
http://librivox.org/2009/11/22/about-that-ulysses-recording/
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Twitter tags: Book Club, Ulysses - #occupyulysses Book Club, all - #1book140
It's worth noting that Ulysses was written over a seven-year span. It may not be unreasonable to think it will take as long to fully grasp this work.

Increase readership through improved promotion

Fan fiction authors are frequently concerned about increasing readership of their creative writing. Sometimes they are driven to stroke their ego through traffic; sometimes they'd like more feedback to improve their writing. Writers often want to increase their name recognition, too, in advance of publication of  non-fan original works of fiction.

Whatever the motive, fan fiction authors need to understand the existence of a critical ratio -- the comments per post ratio. Only a small percentage of persons who read a blog post will actually take the time to comment. This percentage is even smaller than the number of visitors; remember that some traffic to any URL is accidental or drive-by and will only skim, not read any content at the URL.

This same ratio exists for ANY site on the internet, whether a Facebook page or a Twitter account. It also applies to any works of self-published fiction, fan or otherwise. 

To understand more about this ratio, see this article: Ratio Analysis for Bloggers 2-Comments per Post Ratio

It's also important to understand that even the very best of products, from Apple brand electronics to fast food hamburgers, will not become popular if they are not promoted. By promotion we mean placed in a way that potential customers see them, become aware of and interested in trying the products. Companies use a combination of tools to this end, including advertising and placement of product in key locations; it's no accident that popular cereals, for example, are on the grocery store shelves right at your eye level where you can readily see and reach for them. That's a deliberate effort to make the product available to you.

Yes, you may already have self-promoted your work through your own blog, Twitter or Facebook account. If your readership at those sites is proportionally small, this will not increase traffic or widen interest among new visitors. You'll have to stretch a little more for effective promotion.

In the blog world, promotion can take the form of links at other blog and websites, including actual advertising. It may also take the form of recommendations by key personalities who have popular blog/websites. 

If you are trying to increase readership of your creative writing, whether works of fan or original fiction, you'll want to identify sites which are geared toward promotion of your work. In the Twilight fan fiction fandom community, the following sites are frequently used to promote fanfic:

http://www.thetwilightawards.com/

http://www.twiwrite.net/

http://twinetwork.wordpress.com/

http://twificdatabase.blogspot.com/

http://tweetafic.blogspot.com/

http://www.indieficpimp.blogspot.com

http://www.fictionators.com/

http://www.twilightficzone.blogspot.com

http://www.twimuses.com/

Another method of promotion is posting about your works at community sites popular in the fandom, like A Different Forest. Submitting appropriate works as requested by other fandom sites may also help, like Perv Pack's Smut Shack or The Lemonade Stand (in these two examples, content is for mature audience and works must be M-rated).

One other option is participation in popular awards as the awards sites will help with promotion of your work. Two examples for the Twilight fan fiction community are:

http://emergingswanawards.blogspot.com/

http://www.avantgardeawards.com/

Authors may also want to consider participation in charitable events like Fandom Gives Back. By contributing a small work of fiction under the event's guidelines, authors may reach a new and wider audience and increase readership of their other earlier and future works.

Take careful note of the most popular works of fiction and their authors. How are those works and writers being promoted? They may offer additional education about effective promotion through a little research into their outreach efforts. You may find that some do not have any presence on Facebook and/or Twitter but only have a fan fiction account. Look carefully at what works to make them popular.

Lastly, it's important to remember that readers want to experience quality works  and will help increase readership by word if they enjoy a particular piece of writing. As an author it's important to remember that if you focus on the quality of the content itself and treat reasoned critiques respectfully in order to improve your work, readers will be more likely to both enjoy and assist in promoting your work. 

There are untold numbers of unsuccessful products pulled from the shelves which didn't make potential customers happy enough to buy the product, in spite of massive ad campaigns. Works of creative writing may be no different than these commercial products.

Writing purely for the sake of increasing traffic isn't enough to actually increase traffic; readers want something worth the investment of their time, whether to stop and read or make the greater effort to comment. Give them real value, something worth their time which piques their interest and entertains them -- or all the promotional efforts in the world won't make a difference.

The inevitable question: Why hang out here?

Any time now somebody is going to ask me the question.

Why the hell are you here in fan fiction?

Or a variant on the question, delivered with a smirk and/or a snort:

Why the hell are you here in Twilight fan fiction, of all places?

Yeah, I know. They won't ask me to my face why an intelligent woman of my age, education, background, and status is hanging out in what looks like a pop cult centered on unrequited teen desires.

But I'll answer their questions, both the open ones and the unspoken ones.

First, fan fiction is a great way to take a plunge into creative writing. One can take short cuts on character development and concentrate on construction of a story arc, development of themes, tone and language usage while extending pre-developed characters. (It's a win-win for published authors whose characters are used as springboards since fan fiction sustains interest in their works.)

For someone like me whose body of writing has been nonfiction for more than eight years, this is a real treat -- a cheat of sorts to help me get the bugs worked out of writing fiction before I concentrate on an actual non-fan fiction novel.

Secondly, fan fiction as a whole is very, VERY open and diverse, extremely liberal. For example, authors and readers alike are willing to explore a spectrum of expression in human sexuality and through a virtually unlimited range of scenarios. Topics from poverty to infertility to global politics are plumbed by authors whose backgrounds are as varied and in many cases highly knowledgeable about the topics they use in their work. This openness is a strong fit with my personal values; it feels like home. I don't have to compromise while exploring creative writing.

Thirdly, with specific regard to Twilight fan fiction -- there is an enormous concentration of creative feminine energy. It boggles the mind how many well-read and creative women offer up their hobby writing for free. There aren't many places where women can congregate in these numbers and work so freely in tandem or collaboratively on creative projects.

Fourthly, the Twilight fan fiction community is extremely supportive in a way that the next largest fan fiction community is not. It's not absolutely clear that this is a result of the overwhelmingly female percentage of participants, but it's hard not to think that this is a factor when the most active proponents of other women's work are women themselves. They've developed networks and social media tools to flack their fiction works, and in some cases the promotional efforts have led directly to print publishing for profit.

Lastly, fan fiction is a really tremendous place to learn not only about writing but getting one's works published. The social networks entwined around fan fiction are linked to book agents, published authors and publishers, so many of whom are willing to share information about getting published.

So that's it, in a nutshell, the reasons why I allow myself to pigeonholed with those folks. Yeah, we know outsiders look askance at us and point fingers, snigger and refer to us as if we have a third eye in our foreheads. But they don't get it and likely won't; when they cough up money for a published work written by someone who once dabbled in fan fiction, maybe they will clue in.

Say it out loud: it's a crime, it's violence

There's an interesting essay being passed around right now. It's interesting for two reasons. It points out that crimes are regularly committed against women and girls with far greater frequency than numbers reported by law enforcement, and that the crimes and their victims are minimized, swept under the carpet by the label used for these crimes.

But using the label repeatedly reinforces its legitimacy -- that's where the essay goes astray. While the author is a victim herself and is clearly still coming to terms with the crime committed against her, she is locked in the loop forced on her by a culture committing a second crime against her. (Sadly, she even blames herself for crimes against others, even though she may have been but a minor at the time.)

The crime is the denial by our culture that at least one violent act took place against her and others like her deserving our action.

We need to teach our children -- yes, boys, too, as both potential victims and parents/loved ones of victims -- the legal terms for violent criminal acts, and teach them to  use them to effect appropriate action.

If someone touches you against your will, without permission and with intent to threaten or harm, it's battery.

if someone threatens to touch you against your will, without your permission and with intent to harm, it's assault.

If someone forces a sexual act on you against  your will, without permission, it's rape (if intercourse) or sexual assault and quite possibly battery as well.

If someone has a sexual act with a minor, even with the minor's permission, it's rape.

If someone enters your home without permission, especially with force, it's trespassing.

Call it what it is, use the words. Don't give the assailant's and/or rapist's denial any more legitimacy by calling it "not [anything]."

It's particularly important that a community of women who are so very fond of words understand that not only their dreams and aspirations deserve to be enshrined properly in words written and spoken. 

Their nightmares deserve to be called out for what they are, recognized on sight as the monsters they are -- violent acts. 

Tell the truth as it is: these are crimes.

And say it out loud.

[See the work of George Lakoff on framing for a more complete understanding of the nature in which words are used to manipulate behavior.]

Brewing: the sisters are doing it for themselves

I'm still meditating and cogitating over a thesis regarding a quiet revolution in women's emergence. I still can't quite wrap myself around what I want to say and quite possibly have now gathered too much research to make a coherent point.

That said, my thesis' summary could boil down to this:

The sisters are doing it for themselves.

Women are no longer waiting for some prince, either as an individual or as a collective or as some other entity, to address their needs. They are taking matters into their own hands.

No enough romance in your life? Sister, write your own and share it with others.

No enough hot sex in your life? Sister, write about your deepest desires no matter how kinky and share it because you know you are not alone in wanting this. Sex with the men or women who aren't ordinarily in your reach, sex with strangers, sex with multiple partners -- have it all, and safely here in the world of fiction.

Finally, is the man in your life an uncooperative ass? Sister, write about a figurative paper doll of a man you can bend and twist into all the things you want -- and while you're at it, bend him over the couch so another gorgeous well-hung paper doll of a man gives it to him up the backside. Take that, asshole, figuratively speaking.

We are taking care of ourselves and building what we want and need for each other, here in the online world of self-published fiction.

Watch out when we take the next step and fully realize what it is we want.

Brewing: thoughts on paradigmatic shifts in women's emergence

My mental wattage has been preoccupied by some consulting work this week. What little wattage I have left has been kicking around some nebulous thesis about a quiet revolution in women's emergence. I think we are face with a sea change not unlike that between the 1950s and 1960s when birth control and women's rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 dramatically changed women's roles in our western society.

But I can't quite get a handle on what it is I want to say, no doubt for the lack of adequate wattage. I'll just throw these bits out and let them brew for now; perhaps a bit of steeping out in the open will help coalesce my under-powered thinking.

Francis Fukuyama touched on the failure of the impetus behind the 1960s women's movement to fully realize all that women needed to be true equals to male counterparts during the pendulum-like swing of society's expectations liberalizing women's rights. See his work The Great Disruption. While I'm unhappy with the direction that Fukuyama's politics took in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I think  he still makes highly valid points about the swing of movements and opposing reactions.

Article, Look God, No Hands in the most recent issue of Utne Reader hints at an opposing reaction to changes in women's sexuality. One would think that women's masturbatory self-care would be approved by Christian fundamentalists as an alternative to sex out of wedlock, but no -- apparently all sex is supposed to be procreative.

I'm trying to hunt down a news article from an Indian news paper that I'd tripped over last week. The article discusses researchers findings with regard to women's appreciation of same-sex smut. It's the first time I've seen mention of a study of this nature, suggesting there is a trend at work here -- a swing of the pendulum, if you will.

If you see something I might find interesting and relevant to this nebulous thesis, feel free to drop me a comment.