You know, that is a good point and definitely something I experience a lot. A lot of fandom is community based so there's really no way that the community can't be part of your experience. You'd have to be seriously cut off to be able to not react at all to the environment. I think fandom often creates an environment that makes people just not want to write for it--which is different, I guess, from it making a person give up writing as something they personally enjoy. One of the points in recent discussions for instance, is that while on one hand there may be people who shy away from writing because they don't like criticism, there's also good authors who are driven out of fandoms by mediocrity. They don't feel like they can't write if they want to, I guess, it's just that they're not going to participate in that community.
I wouldn't want to put down writing-as-a-social-activity either, because there's nothing wrong with it as that. It's like dancing, for instance: there's nothing wrong with just wanting to go out and dance socially without having any burning desire to join ABT. If it gets to where there's nobody you want to dance with at a particular place you're going to stop going there and maybe therefore stop dancing. Not because you're turning away from the thing you love but just because you're not getting anything out of it to make you continue.
So yeah, that is a good example of a way fandom can make you stop writing--and a healthy example, I think. In fact, even if you do really want to be a professional writer there's a time where you should ask whether what you're doing is making you happy. Sometimes I think people can feel like they're supposed to "want" to be an artist long after they stop getting any real pleasure out of it. There's nothing wrong in a person saying that they realized they were actually happier or more fulfilled as a teacher, for instance, than they were as an unemployed actor, and that that gave them a good outlet for their need to perform.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-19 12:31 pm (UTC)I wouldn't want to put down writing-as-a-social-activity either, because there's nothing wrong with it as that. It's like dancing, for instance: there's nothing wrong with just wanting to go out and dance socially without having any burning desire to join ABT. If it gets to where there's nobody you want to dance with at a particular place you're going to stop going there and maybe therefore stop dancing. Not because you're turning away from the thing you love but just because you're not getting anything out of it to make you continue.
So yeah, that is a good example of a way fandom can make you stop writing--and a healthy example, I think. In fact, even if you do really want to be a professional writer there's a time where you should ask whether what you're doing is making you happy. Sometimes I think people can feel like they're supposed to "want" to be an artist long after they stop getting any real pleasure out of it. There's nothing wrong in a person saying that they realized they were actually happier or more fulfilled as a teacher, for instance, than they were as an unemployed actor, and that that gave them a good outlet for their need to perform.