Amateur. It’s an ambivalent word — much like its opposite, professional. On the one hand, bound into its very etymology is the noble notion of doing something out of love, rather than for profit or because it is simply one’s job. On the other hand, there’s the sense that standards of quality are inevitably lower for work that no one is paying for. “Amateurish” is a pretty substantial insult.
It used to be that most of the writing people read for entertainment or information was bought and paid for. And maybe that’s still true overall, or for some people. But not necessarily. There has, I think, been a sea change over the last twenty or so years — one that we are still seeing the fallout from, in terms of its impact on the writing and publishing worlds.
You see it in a lot of different arenas. There’s the self-publishing phenomenon, which as Andrew Hall points out has become a major factor among the “best books” of Mormon literature. There’s the rise of fanfiction, of free online magazines, of personal and community blogs like, well, this one. When I want information on any given topic, I can often search the Internet and what I need from Wikipedia, or from some other site that no one is paying people to write for. That’s kind of remarkable — both that people are creating information resources and stories simply because they want to, and that people can.
I’ve written before about the amateur nature of Mormon letters, and the fact that even among those who choose to (and can) go the traditional professional writing and publishing route, most of the writers in the Mormon community cannot make anything like a living wage off our creative writing. That was true even before the explosion of the Internet, back when traditional publishing was the only way to go. The difference now is that everyone is operating in a world where you don’t have to pay in order to have something to read, and you don’t have to jump through the hoops of traditional publishing if you have a story to tell.
And some fanfiction (for example) is very widely read indeed, with tens of thousands of readers — perhaps more in some cases. And some is quite well-written. But it doesn’t have to be, in order to be popular. Or rather, it doesn’t have to be well-written in all the ways that traditional publishing (at least in theory) demands that things ought to be well-written: clear, grammatically unambiguous, free of reference errors. For readers of fanfiction (and I include myself in this), it’s enough that the work align with our particular interests, and do it relatively well. Or even not-so-well, sometimes. And, yes, the time I spend reading fanfiction is quite possibly time that I might otherwise spend reading published fiction.
Which illustrates, quite neatly, one of the problems that the new amateur world of writing and publishing presents for traditional publishers, for writers trying to make a living from their writing, and for those (again including myself) who want to see high-quality fiction written and read.
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I won’t go into all of my reasons for reading fanfiction, though part of it I think is similar to the embarrassed admission by one of my sisters that she used to read romance novels during pregnancy, even though she didn’t care for them at other times, because they were engaging enough to take her mind off being pregnant but not too demanding intellectually. (And yes, I’m aware that this is an unfair generalization about romance novels — but apparently it was true of the particular romance novels she was reading. And besides, she’s my sister, and it was her experience, and, well…)
And really, my post isn’t primarily about fanfiction. Rather, fanfiction helps illustrate some of the broader points I want to make about writing and publishing today. Which, in a nutshell, are as follows:
- Everyone can write his or her own story or stories. And nowadays, everyone can get that story out there for people to read. And many, many people are doing so.
- Most of these people are not being paid for their work. It is, instead, essentially a self-subsidized hobby.
- Some of that work is quite good. But even the work that isn’t good seems to be able to find a readership.
- Reading and storytelling seem to have a great deal to with community. And one of the things that the current electronic age excels at is providing tools for people to create communities of interest — large, small, and in between.
- When it comes to recreational reading, people often choose to read stories that meet their particular interest and that arise out of their own community in preference to others that may be better written, better edited, and in a slicker format. And for the first time in a long time, readers now can choose to do that, on a large scale and without reliance on traditional means of publishing and distribution.
This is not necessarily all bad. For one thing, there is greater potential now for stories to be told (and read) that deserve a place on our cultural shelves, even if they aren’t commercially viable and don’t appeal to a broad community. This can include high-polished literary fiction as well as “popular” fiction. The Mormon Poetry Slam and Mormon Lit Blitz are just as much products of this new world as fanfiction.
Second, I can’t help but think there’s value in anything that motivates people to write more — on their own, without being assigned for a class — particularly when it exposes them to feedback and motivation to improve. And that does happen. Most of these people may never do any professional writing, but there’s no downside I can see to everyone learning how to write better.
A harder question is what this means for professional storytelling and literature as a whole, including the notion of a literary canon. Will this mean the demise of the professional editor? Good writers being driven out of the field by an inability to support themselves? Fragmentation of the reading audience beyond hope of any common grounds? A general lowering of literary standards? I don’t think any of these is a foregone conclusion, but confess that I think there already are and will continue to be substantial and — for some of us — unsettling changes in all these areas.
Meanwhile, I find myself wondering if maybe the transition from a professional writing and entertaining class might not ultimately prove to be a good thing in itself (assuming that it ever happens). I’m not one of those who believes that being paid for one’s work somehow contaminates either the artist or the art. But I can’t help but wonder how the shape of art would be different — will be different — if we removed the need to make money from the equation. We may be in the process of discovering the answer to that question.