Sharing your work with the "outside"

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BluRmGrl

Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
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Part of what I like about PLEBA is that we tend to be very supportive of each other. While there's nothing that can replace encouragement for a writer struggling with their story, I began to wonder today how my story (The Next Best Thing, for anyone wondering :wink: ) would read to someone not already in love with the band. :hmm:

That led me to think who I trusted IRL to read what I've written so far & offer me a fair critique. That led me to a near panic attack, thinking of someone outside the safe walls of PLEBA, looking at what is a very personal piece of work for me. :yikes:

So - have any of you put your stories in front of friends, relatives, co-workers, whatever? If you did, were you afraid/ashamed of being labeled as ridiculous for the subject matter? Was it beneficial or detrimental to your belief in your abilities?

Please discuss. :nerd:
 
Not in five billion years would I show my stuff to anyone other than fellow Plebans. But I tend to be a little......unconfident..about my writing. I also don't think anyone outside of our little community here would understand why we do it. It's not "being obsessed", it's more taking people and characteristics that we are familliar with and using them in a creative outlet.

I never ever thought I'd write anything before I joined Interference and found a bunch of people who were supportive and accepting.

That being said I don't think I'd ever be able to show any of my stories to my best-friend and she's as accepting and supportive as you can get. She just wouldn't get it. Mind you, her favourite singer is Celine Dion so there's no accounting for taste.

p.s. please ignore the five billion spelling mistakes in this..hehehe.
 
I don't even tell anyone I write fan fiction. My husband thinks I'm working on a vampire story - because I know he'd never ask to read it. But writing it is fun for me. I'm afraid my friends would think I'm crazy or in need of help if I say, yes..I'm writing a love triangle about Bono and Larry of U2. Oh look, here come men in straight jackets and a restraining order. Merry Christmas to me!
 
Same thing with me, GR... Mr. Blu knows I'm writing a story & I'm sure he suspects U2 plays into it somehow since I only post it here, but he's the only one besides you guys that know about my fan fic. :reject:
 
I know a lot of people who write fan fic about actors and such. I can only imagine the copious fanfic about the Twilight series out there. For me, I think it started because when I write a story it's like casting a movie for me. I pick actors and musicians to sort of star in it and it helps me play it out in my head. I guess it was a natural progression to just use the real people to tell the story of the real people - starring someone who was kind of like me (or a version of myself).

I kind of wish more people posted fanfic. Makes me think I'm the only that doesn't have a life. But it is nice to turn off the day and put on another hat and just lose myself in the moment of writing. I have not done it so long. This fanfic might get me to write other fiction again. That was a big part of me before motherhood and running took over.
 
Oh man that's the question of the year! Do I show my FanFiction to anyone outside PLEBA and Burning Down Love? Hell. No. There are many reasons for this.

1) My boyfriend would KILL ME! :lol: Sometimes I wish I would have made a separate name for my FF's and another name for regular posting. I thought about asking Sicy about this but I'm thinking it would be too much work on her part and mine. :crack: Luckily my boyfriend respects my privacy and I'm not doing anything harmful. I love to write! I need to write about as much as I need to breathe. Which brings me to my next point:

2) Writing is personal to me. Always has been, always will be. It's my escape from reality. Some people meditate, some go to church. I write. Or read. Or paint. I don't only write fan fiction. I enjoy writing poetry, short stories, novels. I'm currently working on a novel and my boyfriend is interested in that. He actually helps me with it. I've sent chapters of Adrift (the naughty parts :shifty:) to my best friend and she's completely cool with it. She loves fan fiction. She and I used to write Linkin Park slash back in high school. So she understands. Would I show these to, let's say, my mother? Noooo. Not in a thousand years! It took everything I had just to show her my poetry and the first chapter of my novel.

3) If someone isn't a U2 fan, they more than likely wouldn't want to read about a girl flirting/having sexual encounters with the band members. If someone can't stand U2's music, they sure as hell wouldn't be able to stand FF. :lol: So I leave it to you, my lovely PLEBAns and the Burning Down Love LJ to support me and what I do.

4) People would label me either a nut or an obsessed freak. Which is not the case. Like I said, I don't only write about U2. I write about lots of things. I have two novels in the making. One is about vampires and the other about sisters who have brothers as drug addicts. Nothing romantic or even remotely sexual. And I would hate for people to see me as a "groupie" or a "teeny bopper." I love U2. Their music will always come first. And if my dedication to the band was on the line, or if the mates said that they don't feel comfortable about fans writing fiction about them, would I put an end to my FF days? Absolutely. There are times when I'm writing and I think, "Wow, this is obscene. Should I really be writing about REAL men with REAL lives and REAL families like this?" It is a personal comfort boundary. But like I said, I'm not harming anyone and I'm helping to grow as a writer.

Someday, I'm sure, my FF days will come to an end. But until then, they are written for my eyes and the eyes of those who enjoy reading this type of Fiction.

I rambled. I apologize.
 
Rambling is just unedited sharing. (Sometimes I wonder how I make this shit up! :lol: )

Anyway, don't apologize - I appreciate your honesty. :hug:
 
Yes I had one of my relatives once read my Imzadi (Star trek Riker/Troi) fanfiction.. the majority of mine spare for one were all PG but it was still creepy. They found them on a site.. I did not go out sending to peoples.
 
Rambling is just unedited sharing. (Sometimes I wonder how I make this shit up! :lol: )

Anyway, don't apologize - I appreciate your honesty. :hug:

:hug:

Yes I had one of my relatives once read my Imzadi (Star trek Riker/Troi) fanfiction.. the majority of mine spare for one were all PG but it was still creepy. They found them on a site.. I did not go out sending to peoples.

:ohmy: Did they know that it was you who wrote it?
 
Only to my sister, because she generally helps me write my stuff anyway. :lol: And yet she claims not to be a U2 fan... Harrumph. She really likes my U2 stories a lot, particularly the comedy ones.
I would be way too scared to share my stories with anyone other than her and people I know are diehard U2 fans though.
I did have a traumatizing experience where my mother found a very risque Macphisto story I wrote though. D: She didn't make the connection that it was about Bono though, haha.
 
Macphisto as an alter for Bono in fic... :hmm:

I could ramble at length (be not embarrassed about your rambles, L&L!), but I'm posting from work and am nervous enough about the IT guys tracking my access here. *L*

I've always loved writing, and since I was a teen I've written reams of stories of varying quality. I actually wrote something that had an element of real-artist fic in it before I even knew what fanfic was. I showed that to my best friend at the time, and she correctly pointed out that it was a huge (100+ handwritten pages, :crack: ) excersise in wish-fulfilment. Did that bother me? Not particularly. :wink:

Before I became a U2 fan, I got into writing in a pre-established fictional world (Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, if anyone knows it), and really got into that for many years. When I finally found this place, I admit I was startled that people wrote stories about U2, real people. I figured, Pern fic is one thing, the world is fictional and the characters are all original. (I must have conveniently forgotten about that thing I wrote as a teen.)
But once the idea of U2 fic was in my head, I eventually had to give it a try. I was so embarrassed about it that I used an alter to post the first couple of mini stories in this forum.
But people were nice, and I started getting ideas for much longer stories... I actually showed my first long U2 fic to a friend from the Pern fic club, and she was very supportive and not judgemental at all. (I'm not sure how serious she was in her claim to have a bit of a thing for Edge - I was trying to convert her to U2 fandom too!) I think she actually went as far as joining interference so she could comment on the story when I finally posted it. *L*

But anyway, she was the only non-PLEBAn who has (to my knowledge) read any of my U2 fic. I was on the brink of showing something to a non-PLEBAn interferencer friend last year, but I chickened out in the end... besides, they know I've written fic, and they can read it here if they're that interested. *L*

Basically, I write U2 fic because I love/need to write, and for whatever reason, for the last three years or so, the vast majority of my creativity seems to be coming out via U2 as characters. (I just find them fascinating, and I don't pretend that the characters I write about bear any great similarity to the real personalities of the band members. We only know their public personae, after all.)

This frustrates me sometimes (the U2-only creativity), as I would love to have been writing all these words towards something I could conceivably publish one day, but there it is. The Pern fic was unpublishable too (not cos it was naughty, just for copyright reasons - same as U2 fic. I haven't yet written any naughty U2 fic and I don't think I will... it's just not my thing.)

I also have a twinge of unease sometimes - I am sure that if the band knew that fans wrote fic, it would freak them out. Put yourself in their shoes; it would freak me out! But as long as I don't know whether they know, and I don't know what they think, and I don't think they'll ever know that I'M writing it, I can ignore the moral dilemma and indulge my U2-related muse. I figure they're never going to read it and it's not doing any harm.

... and I wasn't going to ramble. :lol:

My point, if I ever had one, is that I guess it all depends on who you're showing it too. Some people won't judge or point and laugh, and others will. My personal feeling is that I don't think most of my non-PLEBAn friends would understand, but my friend from the Pern club proved me wrong in one instance.
 
I have shared the stuff I've written with two friends outside of here only. One doesn't really count for this query though, since she was also a huge U2 fan (thanks to ME), and wrote her own U2 "fanfic" long before I tried my hand at it. I was only hesitant to share it with her because hers was so much better than mine :lol:
The other friend I shared it with is a casual U2 fan and so is familiar with the people and concepts that would be involved in a story. She wasn't judgemental at all, though I advised her to skip the naughty parts simply because she seems to fear all things sexual in nature. She is into all kinds of, sorry, odd fandoms so I knew that she wouldn't think it creepy or obsessive.
I would never, ever show anything like this to my mom, for obvious reasons. As far as another opinion as to whether your writing style is good, what needs work, etc from someone who would be totally honest...it's tricky. I've done some fanfic writing as a creative outlet, because I like to write and it's easy to build stories around "ready-made" characters, so to speak, that I am already very familiar with. I would never show it to a random person, simply because I'd be too embarassed, the subject matter is too personal and reveals to much about the kinds of things I think about :lol:

If you were to seek creative feedback from someone, you would have to tell them to focus on the writing elements, the way it sounds, how it flows, how the story is developed...rather than the actual subject matter, which could seem peculiar.

*joins the rambling club*
 
:hmm: Is it really any surprise that we keep posting rambling answers, considering that we've all chosen writing as our emotional & creative outlet? :laugh:

Thank you all for your candor - I appreciate every post. :grouphug:
 
Speaking of parents though... My mother was oddly cool with this really weird, never-ending story I wrote with a friend when we were fourteen or so that involved several bands and their misadventures. It wasn't sexual or anything but it was probably the most bizarre thing anyone has ever written. :lol:
 
Here is another question - that I am a little afraid of the answer - when are you too old to write fanfic? If I think back to my first stories, I guess they were fanfic as well. And it was a very long time ago. :reject:

I think part of my embarrassment comes from the feeling that I am too old and should just know better than to waste my time with such silly dalliances - and I should knit or something.
 
I'd never show my fanfic to anyone other then in here; not that I write it any more. Other stuff though, yeah, I've shown a relative and I've let hubby read a few chapters of stuff that I've written. Which leads me into saying that yes, I WANT people to read my stuff because one day, one day I'm going to get published, even if I have to publish it myself, lol..:lol::D
 
Yep :) I only found Interference recently; I have a bit of my fanfic posted on different sites. It's a little odd, but also just seems kind of usual for me.
 
Too old? Ever? Oh hell naw. I fully plan to be eighty years old in a nursing home giggling to myself while disturbing all the nurses with my fan fic that will be written about who-knows-what-band by then (Probably U2 still, haha!).
 
I'd never show my fanfic to anyone other then in here; not that I write it any more. Other stuff though, yeah, I've shown a relative and I've let hubby read a few chapters of stuff that I've written. Which leads me into saying that yes, I WANT people to read my stuff because one day, one day I'm going to get published, even if I have to publish it myself, lol..:lol::D

And I keep waiting for you to publish something so I can read more of your writing! :wink:

As for the age thing, you're never too old to write, or do, anything, if that's what you want to do.

Well okay, I might look askance at an 80-year-old woman dressed in a mini-skirt and dancing in a club at 3am on a Saturday morning, but who am I to judge? :giggle:
 
And I keep waiting for you to publish something so I can read more of your writing! :wink:

As for the age thing, you're never too old to write, or do, anything, if that's what you want to do.

Well okay, I might look askance at an 80-year-old woman dressed in a mini-skirt and dancing in a club at 3am on a Saturday morning, but who am I to judge? :giggle:

Thanks Ali.:hug: And I agree, writing can begin at any age, doesn't matter how old a body is. In fact, some might say that the older the body, the more knowledge it can hold. I've been writing ever since I can remember and I'll go on writing for as long as I can. Hee, when I go and croak my relatives will probably find a stash of stuff I've forgotten about, lol. I won't care though because I'll be dead, *giggles*:D
 
I agree with what everyone here has said. I don't care if I'm writing fan fiction, poetry or my own novels, just as long as I'm writing. Like the Edge said about his guitar playing in It Might Get Loud, "That is my voice." My writing is my voice. I'm not a musician, or an actress, I'm an artist and a writer. It's what I'm good at and I know that I'm good at it. And I used to be ashamed of writing until I got to be this age. I used to never show anyone my writings besides some of my poetry. Other than that, no. Especially my fan fictions because sometimes I put too much "personal" aspects into my stories that it even makes me a tad uncomfortable. But a lot of people, such as yourselves, don't know it's personal and I want to keep it that way.:lol: Writing is my escape, my joy and my outlet. Without it, I'd be insane.

As for the "age" limit. I'm young. I'm 21. And when I found out that one my favorite authors on here (and a lot of other authors) were in their thirties, I was shocked! And yet I was totally blown away. If anything, people should be freaked out by a 21 year old girl writing about, uh, certain "things" with fifty year old men! :crack::heart:

To me, it doesn't matter how old you are. Our imaginations are ageless. I will be on my death bed with a laptop, writing down my last thoughts before leaving this world. Will it be fan fiction, poetry or a short story? I don't know and I won't care, as long as I'm writing. And besides, it U2's fault for being so damn tempting. :shifty: LOL! Never be ashamed to runaway with your thoughts!
 
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