The Middle Distance

Thanks! [smile/curtsy]

Yes, it was very difficult to take. As I said, I was furious and that wasn't any kind of exaggeration. But that's what makes it such a good example -- that it was a pretty extreme example of someone's fic of my work coming about as close to ruining my work as it's possible to come without actually erasing it from the bulletin board, digging it off my hard drive and burning the backup disk [wry smile] and yet even then I was able to maintain and be polite and civil about it. Even after that kind of provocation I still don't think it's right or reasonable for a writer to expect to have any kind of control over how a reader responds to their creative work, or to have any kind of a veto power over that reader's creative response.

And yes, fanficcers do that to pros All The Time so griping when it's done to them just doesn't impress me. [sigh]

There's something deeply flattering about the attempt, whether you like the result or not--someone gave your story so much detailed attention.

Yes, exactly! That's exactly it -- that something I wrote affected a reader so strongly that it drove them to go out and write their own fic to explore the ideas that my story gave them. [nodnod] Even if I don't care for what they write, the fact that they wrote it Because Of Me is absolutely awesome! [beam] I can't deny that the girl who ficced my poem liked it very much and had an incredibly strong emotional response to it, and that's very cool even if I hated her response itself.

Angie