Episode 171: OFIC Magazine
In Episode 170, “OFIC Magazine,” Flourish and Elizabeth welcome back fic writer, editor, and writing teacher Betts to talk about her latest project, a literary magazine of original writing by people from fandom. Topics discussed include OFIC’s origin story, Betts’s observations from the first round of submissions, whether fic has a unifying genre or aesthetic, and ways readers in and out of fandom think about character. They also talk about the upcoming sessions of Betts’s Fanauthor Workshop, and how her beliefs about writing workshops inform the way she runs her own.
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:46] Betts’s first appearance on the podcast was in January 2020: Episode 118, “The Craft of Writing (Fanfiction).”
[00:01:54] OFIC Magazine! You can also follow them on Twitter and Tumblr.
[00:03:02] Our interstitial music throughout is “Thought Bubbles” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:04:30] Betts answers writing/craft asks on her tumblr, which is here.
[00:29:41] Betts’s bff JSA Lowe was, in fact, a Fansplaining guest! In 2020, on “Race and Fandom Revisited: Part 2.”
[00:31:30] An explainer on best-seller lists—5,000 copies in a week is obviously not nothing! But with the way author payments work, that will not make you a millionaire.
[00:32:53]
[00:46:50] The Fanauthor Workshop!
[00:48:16] Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping is by Matthew Salesses.
[00:56:22] Places to find updates on Betts’s current and future projects:
Her author site (including details on writing coaching)
[01:01:19] You can see Elizabeth’s Phantom Halloween costume in the show notes for our Phantom of the Opera episode, but here’s the first of her two turns as Cruella De Vil:
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #171, “OFIC Magazine.”
FK: I am so excited, I think you are too Elizabeth, because we are going to be inviting Betts back on the podcast.
ELM: Yes. OK. So. Betts came on…about two years ago, I think it was just before the pandemic.
FK: Yep, that’s right.
ELM: She’s a fic writer, a teacher of writing, and when I proposed having her on last time it was because I really loved her Tumblr post where she gave very clear-eyed advice about writing, which felt somewhat unusual in a fanfiction fandom space where…the general writing advice is like, “Do what you want!” Right, which is like, also valuable, but this was a bit more coming from the creative writing workshop education space, that was like, you know, giving craft advice, saying, “Sometimes, depending on your goals, some things do work better than others.” Right?
FK: Yeah, and she’s like, she was like, bringing the things that she’d learned in that space and being like, “Hello, here are these things!” [laughs]
ELM: Right, and there are a lot of people in the fanfiction space who wanna think about their work that way and not just a “do whatever you want” kind of way. It’s a big, it’s a big space, with a lot of different perspectives.
FK: Completely.
ELM: So, she came on to talk about that. Now two years later, we wanted to have her back because she and a few others have launched a magazine called OFIC Magazine, and the gist of it is that it’s original writing by people coming from fandom. And um, I should say up front that I became a patron, because I wanted to support this project. [FK laughs] So I feel like I should disclose that, ‘cause otherwise that would be unethical.
FK: And I am, I am not currently a patron. Although…
ELM: Disclose that.
FK: [overlapping] I kinda, I kinda want to be, now, because, you know, it seems like a really interesting project, and I, you know, we read the first issue, which is out, and I was really intrigued! So I’m excited to ask Betts about, everything about how it’s happening.
ELM: Become a patron!
FK: Yeah, I will!
ELM: I’m a digital patron, I believe it’s $7 per issue, it’s a quarterly, it felt like something I could afford.
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, that’s great, that’s great! Yeah.
ELM: And it’s, it’s just, I think it’s a really interesting project, so I wanted to have her back on in general, just because I think she’s a guest that was cited in a lot of, as an episode people enjoyed. So I was excited to have this kind of peg to talk to her about what she’s been up to and in particular this project.
FK: Yeah, I’m excited too, should we…give her a call?
ELM: Yeah, let’s do it!
FK: Woohoo!
[Interstitial music]
FK: OK, it’s time to welcome Betts back onto the podcast! Hooray!
Betts: Hellooo!
ELM: Hi, thank you so much for coming back on!
B: Thank you for having me, I’m so excited!
ELM: We’re very excited to talk to you again, it’s been…uh, you know, a pandemic, since we talked to you last.
B: It sure has.
ELM: [overlapping] It was just before the pandemic. Yeah, it’s been A Pandemic.
FK: [overlapping] That was really freaky to figure out, we were like, “All right!”
ELM: Yes. All right, so how have you been? How’s your pandemic?
B: I’ve been good, [ELM laughs] I, um…the pandemic hit while I was at a writing residency in Nebraska, so I was away from home and then I came home, and then I never left. So that’s what I’ve been doing. [FK laughs]
ELM: Responsible! Yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to do!
B: Yeah! [laughs]
ELM: Stay home! OK, so. I think to start off, I suspect most of our listeners will have heard that last episode, but I’m wondering if you wanna, like, reintroduce yourself a little bit, and also maybe talk about what you’ve been doing since you were last on.
B: OK! I’m Betts. I’m a fanfic writer. I also answer a lot of asks about writing and craft. I teach creative writing at the college level. I have an MFA from Miami University, and half a Ph.D. from…a school that will not be named. [ELM laughs] Just in case, if there’s bad blood. I don’t think there is.
ELM: Yeah, actually, you know, I saw your posts about this on Tumblr, and you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m wondering if you would talk about that a little bit, because I know that, I’m sure a lot of our listeners coming from fanfiction fandom, you know, I know think about higher education for writing, and I know that your advice on this stuff has really guided a lot of people. So, I don't know, are you OK talking about that?
B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’ll start off by saying that the MFA in creative writing, I still firmly believe, is a fantastic degree. It’s, you know, two to three years of focusing on yourself and your work and developing community. I think it’s a very applicable degree, because you, you can do so much with it. After the MFA you’re qualified for high-level copywriting gigs and things like that, you can become a freelance copywriter, so there’s money in it, you know, you can go into publishing with an MFA, so like, it is a very good degree and I have nothing bad to say about it, which I know is in some circles a controversial opinion. Especially fully-funded MFAs, they pay you to go there, you get teaching experience, you can do a lot of things with it. The creative writing Ph.D. is specifically a degree…in some ways designed to further exploit graduate labor. [laughs]
FK: Whew! [laughs]
ELM: Mmm hmm.
B: So, it’s…a harder version of the MFA, designed to put you back into the academic system. But right now it’s just a near-impossibility to get a tenure track position after a creative writing Ph.D. Like, it’s really really tough, and you have to have a lot of tenacity. The degree itself I have a lot of reservations about. When I attempted it, it was, you know, because it's designed so that when you finish the degree you are ready to become an English professor. So that you can teach a myriad of things.
So it’s just a lot of work, and so this degree that I was in was also truncated, it was three years, and so you had to basically, if you didn't already know the entire, like, literary canon, you had to shove that in your brain in three years. And so, I struggled a lot with that, because a lot of my focus is on more modern types of literature that isn’t really acknowledged yet in the academic canon, except in fan studies. And so that was an entirely separate thing that this department hadn’t really heard of, and so the things I was interested in weren’t necessarily aligning with the things that I was being asked to do.
ELM: So how do you feel now that you’ve let that go? You feel like it was the right decision, obviously.
B: I think it was, it was the right decision, I don’t regret that I did it, because in the time I was there, because I got half the degree done, in the time I was there I really learned a lot. I learned a lot about teaching, I was given a lot of great resources, I don’t regret doing it. But I do think, in the end, I just reached a point where it wasn’t a good fit anymore. So I don’t want to deter anyone from a creative writing Ph.D., if your ultimate goal is to become a professor of creative writing. Because it is kind of required now, to have that extra three to four years after the MFA in order to reach that level of professorship.
ELM: Really? That’s interesting. So, when I was in college, 15 years ago, which is, like, wild to say, but it’s true, my creative writing professor was a visiting writer. Is that less common now than maybe 15, 20 years ago?
B: Well, the general consensus is, you either have a book out that’s very well-regarded, or you have a Ph.D.
ELM: Well, he did have the former, so. Yes. [laughs]
B: [simultaneous] Yes.
FK: Right, so it’s like, if you, if you are lucky to, like, write a breakout novel that super succeeds and everybody thinks is amazing, then you can, off of that, teach with just an MFA.
B: Yes.
FK: [overlapping] But if you don’t have that, then you have to finish that Ph.D.
B: Yep.
ELM: [overlapping] Gotcha.
B: That’s basically the dichotomy there.
ELM: So that’s, and I mean it’s not surprising to me at all to hear that they weren’t familiar with the sorts of things that, the sorts of writing that you are interested in, which I think, maybe is a great segue to talk about the main reason why we wanted to have you on, because I know from the foreword of the first issue of OFIC, leaving the program was the impetus for you to start this. So, I don't know if you want to talk about the dreams you had of it, like, the original dreams, or like, how that came about, how you actually took a step forward to put it together?
B: Yeah, so, it all kind of happened at once. So in the MFA, I remember I was editor-in-chief of my school’s lit mag, and so because I inherited it, a lot of the way that that magazine was run was status quo. Like, there wasn’t, you just, you took it on, you did it the way it’s always been done, you moved on. I didn’t have problems with the way it was done, but I had a lot of questions, and… [FK laughs] and I was skeptical of a lot of things, because it was, everyone was kind of forced to do it, there wasn’t a lot of love in it? And so, there were so many different tastes, and because it was given to us, given to a new year every year, there wasn’t a standard or understandable aesthetic.
So that was the point where I was like, “Well, I wanna make something that has all the things that I think are missing from this experience.” And then in the Ph.D. I took a publishing class. It was a small publishing class, I learned a ton from that, I was lead editor of the magazine that we made in that class, and I learned a lot from that. But it was still the same, like, “We have so many different tastes arguing in this, what is our aesthetic, how do we define it?” And when I left the program, the program was in a different state, so I had a 15-hour drive home. I had a lot of time to think! [FK and ELM laugh] And there was just this…
FK: I’m envisioning you on the road in a car with, like, the radio going, like a montage in a film. [B and ELM laugh] You know?
ELM: Oh, just thinking, I’m envisioning the thinking emoji now while you’re in that car [B laughs harder] just like, “Oooh…”
FK: Well, or like, or like, staring off into a horizon.
ELM: Yeah!
FK: In this montage you’re in the American southwest which I don’t think that you were, but we’re gonna go with it for the montage’s sake.
B: [overlapping] No.
ELM: [overlapping] Mine is the, mine is in the midwest, it’s got like, it’s got corn, like, endless cornfields.
FK: Oh, yeah, the monotony, and you know, like, going.
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, monotony, monotony. OK, Flourish and I are gonna write this. Continue.
B: OK. [B and ELM laugh] So, I was, I was driving home and I realized that like, “OK, if I’m leaving academia forever, except for maybe some adjunct gigs in the future, if I’m leaving, that means I get to choose the course of my life. [ELM and FK laugh]
ELM: Yeah!
B: Because I had this assumption that after the Ph.D. I was going to go into the tenure track application circuit, and my whole life was going to revolve around that, and wherever I got a job was where I would move, and I realized driving home that like, I really like where I’m from, and I wanna stay here. I really like being around my family and my friends.
And so I was like, you know, this pandemic has put a lot of things in perspective for me. And so…I just think, I should do with my life whatever the heck I want! [all laugh] So I was like, “You know, I’m gonna make a magazine, and then from the magazine I’m gonna make a press, and I’m gonna publish books and stories that aren’t being published in these other spaces.”
So that’s where OFIC came from, was just this long drive where I’m like, “I can do this, I have all the skills and the resources to get this done.” I had a bunch of people in mind to tap to help out with it that I knew would be like, really jazzed about it, I knew the talent was there, I knew we would get a ton of submissions, which we did, and it just came together. Like, it was a lot of work, but it came together.
ELM: Well, congratulations on your first issue by the way.
B: [overlapping] Thank you.
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, huge congrats.
ELM: [overlapping] As I disclosed in the intro, I’m a patron, so, I think I have to say that again, just… [FK laughs] You know, I would be congratulating you regardless.
I have so many questions, but I think the first one that comes to mind: Were you familiar, prior to the genesis of this idea, of the history of fan-run presses? Like, the good, the bad and the ugly? [FK laughs] Because when I think about fandom-run “literary” projects…
FK: Oh yeah?
ELM: I think of the ugly. Like, I think of some bad scenes that went down, and people in fandom getting very, very angry. Were you aware of that history—Flourish, you say no, you say no?
FK: No, I mean, I think of that, but I also think there’s been some very successful projects, but those tend to be more in sort of the fanzine category, right?
ELM: Yes. Like, like the, the literary press thing is where I think I’ve, there have been many… [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping, FK making agreeing noises throughout] No, what I’m specifically talking about, which is what this is too, is fans writing original work. Right? Fanzines are not, fanzines are fans creating more fanworks. But it’s the, “Why are you getting so big for your britches,” like, “Why do you think you’re entitled to write something that’s not a fanwork.” Right? [B hmms]
But a lot of those examples are from a decade ago. So I understand we’re in a different time. I’m wondering if you were aware of that history and you were like, “I think we’ve moved on,” or you were worried about that at all?
B: I actually didn’t know of magazines…I actually didn’t know about the history of that. If you wanna tell me more, I'd love to hear about it.
ELM: [laughs] Well, I don’t, some of this feels like wank, which I don’t actually wanna stir up, right?
B: OK.
FK: And it’s also, I don’t know if there’s been a magazine, I think that there’s mostly been presses, presses publishing books.
ELM: [simultaneous] Presses.
B: [overlapping] Ohhh, yeah…
ELM: And some pull-to-publish stuff, in a variety of different kinds of fandoms…um. I mean obviously Fifty Shades of Grey didn’t start out as published by a mainstream press, it was by a fan-run press, and there was certainly, [laughs] certainly some discourse that followed that in its wake as it moved out of the pure fan space into this monetized space.
FK: Yeah, and there’s also then some, some not pull-to-publish, but you know, things that are like-fanfic kinds of publishing ventures that I think have sometimes ended because people weren’t as professional or, you know, weren’t as…I don’t know, like, things where people are doing it in their spare time, and then pretty soon that stops working, at a certain point. [laughs] And then, Armageddon comes.
ELM: Yeah.
B: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: Well, great! That you didn’t, you didn’t have these looming… [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] But you didn’t worry about any of this, because you weren’t thinking about it, you didn’t know!
B: [overlapping] No, I mean, I did know the history of like, filing off the serial numbers and things like that, and so…I want to emphasize, at least in the, in the website copy I think I do, is that you know, this is not a filing-off-the-serial-numbers operation. It’s taking what I feel is the literary merit of fanfiction and putting it in this distilled space, not to monetize it, because you know, the press is, we’re looking into non-profit status, but to just put it on the market to give it a platform. And it is, it is coming from a space of sincerity, you know? Like, nobody’s gonna be making money off of this. [all laugh] This is not a Fifty Shades of Grey operation, there’s not gonna be movie deals in the future probably.
It’s just, I want to encourage writers who love writing for the sake of writing, and maybe have an original idea that doesn’t fit anywhere else, to have a home for it. You know? Like, I do writing coaching, and I talk to writers all the time who write fanfiction, and they’re like, “I have this original idea, where is it gonna go?” Because it is a little too ficcy to be in any one category that we have. But it is, it is still something of amazing quality, and that is commentating on some aspect of society, but it just doesn’t, we don’t have a publishing box for it, you know?
FK: Well, I’m interested in that, I really would love to hear you talk more about that, because one of the things that struck me reading the first issue of OFIC was, I felt like I wasn’t—I wasn’t sure that I felt that those things, that everything in there didn’t have another home. There were a few stories that I felt like I could really see, like, this is playing with intertextuality, and it’s really clearly coming out of like, a, it is coming out of a fanfiction context, with that intertextuality and…OK, I understood that, for sure, but then there were a bunch of other ones that I felt like, this is really fun and delightful and it feels like I might read it in a sci-fi literary mag, you know?
B: Yeah. Mmm hmm.
FK: Like, not in a bad way, just in a, I’ve, you know, this is like Diana Wynne Jones’ Dark Lord of Derkholm, you know?
B: Right, right.
FK: Like, I get that, that’s definitely a thread in sci-fi, and I wonder whether, I mean I’m interested to hear from you what your views on that are, and I guess I’m also interested in whether part of this is maybe also like, people’s levels of comfort with different kinds of publications. Right? Because some of those things, like I said, I felt like maybe could have thrived somewhere else, but maybe the people who would be writing for OFIC don’t have the same relationships with like, a sci-fi/fantasy magazine as they would with you and your team.
B: So I think the one uniting factor of the stories is that you can read them through the lens of the fanfiction genre. So even the more sci-fi pieces, like “The Attended” for example, I guess that’s fantasy, you could still find something like that on AO3, it would just be gen fic, you know? And so, there’s like a Venn diagram overlap of things that fit perfectly in it, but then we also accept some things that are kind of on the fringes of that, and that are maybe in other spaces, and I do acknowledge that some of the pieces could have found homes elsewhere. But I think, especially the sci-fi and fantasy market, is so, so tough.
FK: Yeah.
B: I don’t submit to genre mags, but I know that they’re very highly competitive because they pay very well generally, and literary magazines are usually non-profit, contributors aren’t paid unless they get a copy of the magazine or something like that, even that [all laugh] is a perk, you know?
FK: Whooo… [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Unless they have to pay to submit. It’s the opposite, you get negative money. [laughs]
B: [overlapping] Yeah. Oh my God. The paying to submit…it’s, it is, the state of things… I have a lot to say about Submittable, and how it’s kind of ruining the entire enterprise of literary magazines, but I won’t get into that.
FK: [overlapping] What is Submittable?
B: Submittable is the website that, it’s like the standard website that literary magazines use to, um…to read their submissions.
FK: I see. OK.
B: It is terrible. [B and ELM laugh] I, I won’t get started on that because I won’t stop. [all laugh]
ELM: We’ll change the title of this episode.
FK: Yeah.
B: “Betts Complains About Submittable for an Hour.” [all still laughing]
ELM: Yes.
B: It just, it sucks that it’s the industry standard now, it really does.
ELM: You know, it’s funny that Flourish is zeroing in on the “they wouldn’t find homes elsewhere,” I think that you do see fiction in SFF, you know, short fiction SFF stuff, that you can tell the person, or you can guess that the person came from fanfiction fandom, right?
FK: [overlapping] Oh yeah. [laughs]
B: [simultaneous] Definitely.
ELM: You know what I mean? Not in a, they’re hiding it way, like it’s a secret or whatever, but like, yeah, I don’t think these lines are that strong. Right?
B: [overlapping] No, they’re not.
ELM: And so, I think one thing I would say that for me, and I think I’m diff—I mean I know I’m different from Flourish on this—is to me, I am that kind of other, the far end of the fanfiction spectrum that…I’m not 100% convinced that there is such a thing as “the fanfiction genre.”
B: Right.
ELM: I think that a lot of that comes from my position on that spectrum of caring about the source, like the source material is pretty integral to what I enjoy about fanfiction, right?
B: OK.
ELM: And like, I don’t, I don’t even enjoy reading fiction if I’m not, fanfiction for my old fandoms. Because they’re in the past to me. Right? Like, because I can’t get that affect, because I’m not feeling that fannish thing, and those connections. And so, I don’t know, I get the sense, I’ve always gotten a sense from you that that is not how you approach fanfiction.
B: Right. I see genre not as contingent on the content of the work itself, but I see genre as a lens, and a skill. So, I believe that in any genre, you have to develop a literacy in order to understand reading it at all. So even if you are a fanfic reader who is, you know, devout to one canon, and you don’t read outside of that, it’s still, you could read in a different fandom and understand the tropes, the tenets, you would know how to read it. So, that’s, I think, the defining factor of OFIC, is just the assumption that people reading it know how to read fanfic, and have that skill already.
ELM: Well, what if my argument is “how to read fanfic” is “how to hold the original text and the fanwork in your head at the same time?”
B: Yeah. I mean I think that’s where the divide is, I think that’s part of it, but I think you can also read things just…you can divorce it. And that’s the new space that I think OFIC is trying to inhabit, is, you know, what happens if you take the tropes, if you take that, that skill of reading fanfic, and you apply it to OFIC, what does it become?
FK: Yeah, I see what you’re saying, and I appreciate it, and I think that it’s a completely valid position. I think that I’m being challenged also by the fact that, to some extent, it seems like it’s a particular kind of fanfic that we’re looking at here? You know? I mean, I think about fanfic on some of the more male-dominated platforms.
B: Yeah.
FK: The kind of fanfic that shows up on DeviantArt, you know, and it’s not to say that that’s totally divorced from what’s happening on AO3, because it’s not, there’s this continuum and so forth, but I’m just imagining the kinds of skills that are necessary to read…I don’t know, to read the fanfic of a really starship-obsessed Star Trek guy, right, is very different—
ELM: [overlapping] You and your starships, you just, you won’t let go! [B laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Me and my starships, I won’t let them go. [ELM laughs] But you see what I’m saying?
B: Yeah.
FK: Where like, there’s a, you know. So I mean, that’s interesting too, and I don’t mean to say that that makes OFIC, it can be enough to be looking at one fanfic community, right? But it’s just interesting to me to think about that I guess, ‘cause I’m often trying to sort of check and be like, “Well is this everything?”
B: Right. I will say, we got a number of submissions from, you know, what I would call like, boy fans?
FK: Yeeeeah, boy fans!
ELM: [overlapping in a chant] Starships, starships!
B: [overlapping, all laughing] Yeah, we really did! And, and we considered a lot of them. And we’re going to continue considering them. And so one of the requirements to submit is that in the cover letter, you know, I ask you to talk about your relationship to fandom, and so my definition of that is very, very wide. You know? We have some people who are, like, old-school fans of Broadway, and so that’s completely different than, you know, what I initially meant by fandom, but it’s still fandom, you know? So we have people submitting who are fans of hockey but not like, hockey fandom? But just like, you know, sports fans! [FK laughs] So you know, I’m really open to a lot of interpretations of what it means to be a fan author submitting an original work to OFIC, and I’m really excited to see the kinds of submissions we get from people who stretch that definition.
ELM: That’s so interesting though, because I mean like—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I have so many questions, right? It’s like, at a certain point, is there going to be a, if you bring in all those people, right, is there going to be a, a common aesthetic thread beyond the taste of you and your fellow editors? Which obviously is the driving force behind most literary magazines, so it’s not a problem, right? [FK laughs] You know?
B: Yeah, and I think, I think that’s…it’s difficult to determine, it’s difficult to define. I mean the notion of an aesthetic pushes against the idea of definition. [ELM hmms] And so all we can do is say, “We are publishing the original works of fan people. What does that mean to you?” See what we can get from that, and see what kind of themes emerge. And from there put together an issue, based on work that we think is in conversation with one another.
So a lot of it is like, you know, we have a lot of high-quality submissions, and some of them we decline because our issue has a flow. You know? So it’s, it’s also dependent on the issue itself, and not necessarily the greater aesthetic, because we have to put together what it’s like to sit down and read the whole thing, like a book, you know?
ELM: That makes total sense, that’s very, very interesting. It makes me think about, like, fests, right? And I’m curious, in your experience putting together the first issue and dealing with potential, you know, people who were considering submitting or people who did submit, did you get any tension around this idea of like, “Well it is selective,” you know, because then thinking about fandom at large and getting mad about anything that’s selective, right? [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, yeah, I’m imagining, I’m imagining what it would be like if I were like, I’m gonna put together a zine, and I’m just gonna ask some people whose fics I like to be in the zine, and then we’ll make the zine, and then that’s the end of it, and like, you can’t…it’s just what I think is good! You know? [laughs]
ELM: Right, that wouldn’t be the end of it. [laughs]
FK: It would not be the end of it.
ELM: Right, and beyond this too, I’m curious, did you have any struggles or growing pains with folks, because I know part of your mission here is to introduce people in the fandom world who haven’t had access to, or felt they could access, the rest of the pro space, right, like have you had any kind of, translation issues, have you had any struggles with shifting from fan expectations to pro expectations?
B: We’ve had a lot of anonymous asks on Tumblr, of questions that I think people would be afraid to ask, or knowledge that you have to go, honestly, you have to get an MFA to know, like you have to have somebody who’s been rejected a thousand times to tell you like, “Here’s what you put in your cover letter, you don’t actually explain your story in the cover letter, you, you just say this sentence, this sentence, this sentence, it’s done.”
So we have had a lot of like, technical questions, of just, like, “How do you submit things” and “What are your expectations,” you know, like “How do you format a story?” So things like that, that I would like our magazine to serve as a resource to answer those questions.
As far as like, any kind of pushback that I receive, I haven’t really, we haven’t had any, we’ve mostly seen a lot of support and positivity. You know, some of our asks you could interpret as maybe being a little bit snarky, but nothing that’s outright hateful or judgemental, you know?
ELM: That’s great! Not what I was expecting from fandom, to be honest! [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, that’s wonderful!
B: I know! And I’m, I’m shocked, honestly. And part of it is that we’re not, we don’t go into our tags, we don’t go out looking for… [all laugh] for the things people are saying about us, because if it, if they really wanted to engage in a conversation they would talk to us directly.
FK: Right.
ELM: Sure.
B: And I would be happy, always happy to have these conversations with people. Because like, this is something I believe in, I want, you know, good feedback, I wanna make this as, in some ways, inclusive as possible, while still maintaining the restrictions of what a literary magazine is.
FK: That's really wonderful to hear. I am curious, like, you know, you were talking about sort of showing people the ropes, and sort of helping them understand what the pro writing community is like, do you…I mean there have been periods where people in fandom have talked about making a writing career, and really framing it in like a “Here’s how you can make money, here’s how you can achieve this, here’s how you can get to that place.” Is that something that you see as a goal for OFIC? Is one of the things that, you want to sort of help introduce and mentor people, and get them into MFA programs and get them into, you know, pro writing? Or is it more like, is that less of a central thing, do you see what I’m saying?
B: Yeah.
FK: Like, you could have OFIC be like this and do those things without it being the like, main goal, or it could be your main goal.
B: Well, so, I will say, the reason that I did an MFA at all, because I started writing fanfic, like I did not, I had no interest in writing original fic when I first started writing, it was all fanfic, that’s all I cared about, and I had a mentor, also my best friend, JSA Lowe, who had an MFA in poetry, and was getting a Ph.D. in poetry at the same time, at the time. And she was like, “You have a lot of promise, you should apply to MFAs,” and I’m like, “What’s an MFA?” [FK laughs]
And so if I hadn’t had somebody who already knew that world, it would have never occurred to me to even consider it. And so part of it is that I want to be that person for other people, and say like, “This is something you can do, if you don’t want to do an MFA, go to a residency, go to a workshop. These are spaces that are, that people just don’t know about, but that like, you are qualified to do.”
You just, to get into an MFA, you need a good short story and a statement of purpose. You know? And a college, and an undergraduate degree. Like, it doesn’t matter what it’s in. So there are so many people who are qualified to do an MFA, to do a fully funded MFA, and to take two years to focus on this thing that they really, really love, and potentially bring it back to fandom so that we have even higher-quality fanfic to read, that would be great! [FK laughs] Or to, you know, get their books and their stories published. I don’t necessarily think anybody’s really driven by money, because it’s fandom, you know, not that I would ever deter somebody from wanting to publish with one of the big four, but…by and large writers don’t make a living writing fiction, you know?
ELM: Yes.
FK: That’s, that’s worth mentioning again, because I do think that there are like, not everybody in fandom knows that.
ELM: Right.
B: I mean if you…if you write something that gets on The New York Times Best Seller list, then yeah, maybe you could afford to live in, like, a midwestern suburb. [all laugh]
FK: For like, three or four years!
B: [overlapping] Yeah.
ELM: [overlapping] Even then, I mean, I don’t know, like, you know, how many thousand copies do you need to be on the Best…it’s not that many!
B: No, it’s not, not to get on The New York Times Best Seller list, so even to get some notoriety, I don't know, like it’s hard to get a second printing of a book that you’ve published, usually you only get one, so it’s…I mean it's a really tough market. I think publishing a book is, is one of the hardest things a person can do. But it is attainable, it just takes a really, really, really long time. [FK laughs]
ELM: Go get ’em, everyone! [all laugh]
B: [laughs] So like I wanna be hopeful, but I also want to be realistic, no you’re not gonna make a living doing this, yes it's going to take several years, but yes it’s also totally worth it to pursue the thing that you’re the most passionate about. You know? To live the life that you want to live.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah.
FK: That’s the theme, with the pandemic.
ELM: Yeah, totally! And I mean, also it’s so funny because it's like, you know, I obviously have a lot of friends who are all kinds of writers, and they’re always like, “You should apply for residencies,” and I’m like, “With what?” You know? And they’re like, “It could be something in progress,” and I’m like, “What, what’s in prog—” [FK laughs] You know, whatever, like I have a, a shelved book proposal or whatever for nonfiction, but like, most of my writing life outside of work right now is writing fanfiction. And I’m not gonna send them my, my mutant-based fic. I mean, I think it’s great, but, you know?
FK: I mean… [all laugh]
ELM: You can’t file the serial numbers off that! [laughs]
FK: It’s true.
B: [overlapping] You never know who’s working at these residencies, one of the residencies I got into, I showed up there, and the woman who ran the whole thing was a fangirl.
ELM: Oh, wow. [FK laughs]
B: And so, because like, you know, I had a letter that probably said, “I’m really into fan spheres and pop culture,” and that actually gave me a benefit in that residency. So like, you never know where we are! [laughs]
ELM: It’s true, that’s so true! [FK laughs] But the point is, though, that like, say most of your work that you’ve “published,” it is publishing but it is self-publishing, to put something on the AO3, maybe that’s everything you’ve published, but to have one thing in OFIC, that I think could make, actually make the difference. Right? Because then that is the official thing you can share, even if all of the stuff that you put on the AO3 was just as good, prose-wise, right? It’s that kinda pathway to legitimacy. Like, that bridge, I think, is really interesting that you're building.
B: Yeah, I mean, you get into OFIC, that’s a CV line. That’s a… [FK laughs]
ELM: Yeah!
B: That’s something to put in your bio. I will say that I got, we got… [laughs] several times more submissions than I thought we were going to get. [FK laughs] So it was a very rigorous and competitive process. So, um, you know, it’s not nothing to get into the magazine. You’re, you’re up against literally hundreds of other people. So.
ELM: That’s wild.
B: Yeah.
ELM: That’s so exciting, for the first one! You are, you are paying the contributors, right? They do get, right, so it's not like all volunteer. But you, you and the other editors are volunteering?
B: Yeah.
ELM: Because money goes to the press itself.
B: The money goes to the press itself, yes.
ELM: I gotcha. OK. Do you hope that someday you could take some, even however small, salary from this? Or do you think that’s not in the cards?
B: It’s not going to be for a very long time. I will say, we are working this year toward getting non-profit status, so it is possible that if we were to make enough money, I could hire salaried employees, but it would take a lot of money to get to that point. So right now we’re operating like, very small, very streamlined, as much as we can be, with things like Submittable which are outlandish, sorry. [all laugh] I just hate it so much.
ELM: [overlapping] No, it's great, I love that you have an ax to grind. [B and FK laugh] I have so many axes to grind that this is relatable.
FK: [overlapping] Your enemy, Submittable.
B: [laughs] The bane of my existence, closely next to Patreon, which is also kind of a mess. I’m sure you guys are fully aware.
ELM: It’s, uh…it’s a platform.
FK: [overlapping] Oh yeah.
B: [overlapping] It sure is.
ELM: Yeah. I wouldn’t frame it as my enemy. Flourish I don’t know if you would, but uh…
B: It’s a benevolent force, it’s just kind of inadequate. But Submittable is like, genuinely malicious. [all laugh]
ELM: When are you gonna write the fic about that, huh? [B laughs] That would be fanfiction, like, for real.
B: “Betts vs. Submittable,” yeah.
ELM: Do you, did you, in any of your submissions, did you get things that could kind of count as fanfiction? Or like, could you see that happening, like, what if I wanted to write something about like, real people? Would that be against the rules?
B: It would not, because it’s technically legal to write and publish about real people. [laughs]
ELM: OK, so is the rule that if it’s technically legal, you can do it?
B: We can do it. It would depend on the piece, I would rather say, “Yes, submit, let us read it and see what it’s like” than to say “No,” you know? Because I’m curious.
ELM: [overlapping] Interesting. Or like…
FK: [overlapping] That’s, is that, yeah, because I was…
ELM: …public domain, fic about stuff that’s in the public domain, right?
FK: Exactly! I was kinda wondering when I opened the issue, I was like, “I wonder, I know that this isn’t supposed to be fanfic, but I wonder if there’s going to be fanfic in here, or like, historical fiction kinds of fanfic, or things like this. Like, I wonder if that’s part of this aesthetic.” And in Issue #1 it seems like the answer is no, but that doesn’t mean there could never be an issue where that was a thing.
B: Right, and it was interesting, what we did come up against is the difference between referring to a canon, like, quoting something, or acknowledging something, versus being within the fictional canon itself.
FK: Mmm.
B: So we published a piece actually that we requested the writer pare back the references to the canon, because it was too close to fanfiction. And so, coming across that like, it didn’t occur to me to ask somebody to take a pop culture reference out. You know? But there was a very clear difference between something that was, that was taking intellectual property and using it, versus something that was simply referring to intellectual property. [ELM and FK both hum]
ELM: That’s interesting. I’m curious, also, too, this makes me wonder, like, can you tell with some of these folks, what fandoms that they’re coming from? Currently? Like, is there, in any of your submissions, was…having been in a fair number of fandoms, I, you know, and being less convinced that there is some sort of pan-fandom aesthetic, right, like…I can tell the vibes of a Harry Potter fic. [FK and B laugh] And they’re not like the vibes of an X-Men fic, right?
B: [overlapping] Right, right. It’s true, yeah.
FK: [overlapping] The vibes are different.
B: So, we definitely could, in some, some scenarios. [ELM and FK laugh] But also because we have that cover letter prompt, a lot of times we had the context going into it, you know, because somebody would say like, “I’ve been in, you know, X-Files for 20 years.” You know?
ELM: Yeah.
B: And so, um… [FK laughs] So, like, we would kind of read their submission knowing that part of their vibe is going to be something X-Files-ish, you know? So we did, we could tell, but also we had that context going into a lot of pieces.
ELM: That’s really interesting. It’s so funny, you know, one thing I love about fanfiction is how people put all that stuff out front, right? [FK laughs] And imagine if it was like, standard in the rest of the literary world to like, desirable to list your influences?
B: I know.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, you know? Which, obviously everyone has influences.
FK: Yeah, but having someone just be like, you know, (my husband), “Don DeLillo all day every day!” [ELM and B laugh] Like all right, that puts a different context to whatever you just wrote.
ELM: [overlapping] Wait, were you just, you were just imitating him, that is what he says.
FK: I mean…practically. [ELM and B laugh] Although, yeah, although not actually in all of them, he’s mad at like, his most recent one I think. [B laughs] Anyway.
B: Don DeLillo.
ELM: [overlapping] Are you, are you looking at the sky thinking of your husband right now? What were you doing?
FK: I was just trying to think of what the most recent one that he was mad at was and whether it was Don DeLillo or somebody else he actually likes.
ELM: One of the three literary fiction writers that he likes.
FK: Yeah.
B: Yeah, I mean, it’s really not the status quo to be like, you know, “I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Nabokov” or whatever.
ELM: Right.
B: Even though, if you are taking inspiration from Nabokov, you can tell in the prose, because he has a very particular prose style. Um…but also I think, it’s not the status quo, but it’s also not, I would say, frowned upon. So like, Garth Greenwell, for example, is very open about the fact that, like, he’s heavily inspired by Henry James.
ELM: Sure.
B: He talks about it all the time. [FK laughs] So, I always see literary fiction as the, the older cousin of fanfiction. [ELM laughs] You know, because it’s like, literary fiction wants to get away with the same things that fanfiction gets away with, you know? [ELM and FK laugh] Because it has, in literary, in the literary world, there’s still so much of that enthusiasm and community support, and in wanting to promote each other, and picking playlists of your, of your books, you know? [laughs] Like, that stuff is still in literary fiction, it’s just, it just comes at it from a different angle, you know?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Yeah, I mean, this is why I always love talking to you, because it drives me up the wall that so many people in fandom can’t see that that’s true. Right? And it’s just like, [whining] “It’s all like divorced men in Brooklyn” or whatever, [FK laughs] and it’s just like… [wordless whining, then laughter]
FK: Well, I, I do think, I do think that one thing that can be like, hard—and you guys can push back on me on this if it’s not right—
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, I’m ready, I’m ready to fight you.
FK: But I think that one thing, right, is that it’s pretty rare…I mean it’s not, it doesn’t never happen, it’s not that it never happens, but most of the time people’s enthusiasm is like, for the writing style, and for like, the, maybe for the themes, or the structure or something like that, and it’s less commonly for individual characters, right?
B: Right.
FK: Like, it’s less commonly like, “I fell in love with—” I mean, OK, this actually is, in The Hours, but “I fell in love with Mrs. Dalloway, and then I wrote a book about her because I’m obsessed!” Right? So you’re like, OK, like yes, you love Virginia Woolf, and you specifically love Mrs. Dalloway, and then you went and you wrote The Hours because you're obsessed with that, like that does happen? It definitely happens, but I feel like it’s less common or less, like, centered, right? Whereas with fanfiction it’s almost always centered around something in the plot or the character more than anything else.
B: Yeah, no, I actually completely agree, literary fiction is very much about the power of the sentence, and the beauty of the written word on a very kind of microscopic level. I don’t want to say it’s a frustration of mine, but it’s like, I read… [laughs] I have two camps of reading, I have entertainment reading and enrichment reading. [all laugh] And enrichment reading is in the morning with coffee, and entertainment reading is at night before bed, you know?
And so enrichment reading doesn’t have to entertain me, because I have entertainment writing that I read later. But you know, when I pick up a book, my questions are, “Is this going to keep me occupied, or is it going to teach me something?” and if it doesn’t do either of those things, I put the book down. And so, you know, if a book has beautiful prose, even if it’s plotless and even if the characters are bland, I’ll still follow beautiful prose to the end of a text.
ELM: Hmm, that’s interesting. I feel like I don’t wholly agree with Flourish, and I guess you Betts. How would I, like, slightly disagree. I think part of the thing here, that we talk about a lot on the podcast a lot, which is, like, fandom’s…fandom and all sorts of kinds of fans’, not just fanfiction fans’, interest in taking characters as like, embodied, separate entities. Right? And not thinking of, like, how they’re constructed.
FK: [overlapping] Right, yeah, that's very true.
ELM: And I think even if you think of like, how they’re constructed, like when I think about the characters I’m writing about, I think about the stupid, overworked X-Men film scripts. Right, you know? [FK laughs] That tried to—
FK: [overlapping] They’re doing their best, Elizabeth.
ELM: [overlapping] They are, they are not doing their, [FK and B laugh] there’s literally no way they’re doing their best. I do not agree with that statement. Godspeed to all of them. [laughs]
But I’m trying to, like, pull out the distillation of the character, whereas like, I don’t know Betts how you feel when you’re reading literary fiction, if you feel this way, but when I’m reading really good literary fiction, I’m partly reading it as you’re describing it, on that enrichment level of like, the character may be so compelling but you’re trying to kinda figure out how they did that, right? And it’s also sort of a, more of a one-to-one, because you’re reading prose, and then you’re gonna be writing your own prose. So you’re not like, I don’t know, you’re not like, “Oh I wonder what would happen to this guy next.”
B: Right.
ELM: You’re more like, “Oh, wow, how did, how did this author so perfectly encapsulate this element of humanity in this character,” that kind of thing. And I don’t think you’re gonna get that watching a Marvel movie, even if you’ve really connected to the characters, right?
B: Right.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s true, I think there’s also something that I think we’ve talked about before is, things that feel sort of finished and complete and sort of…perfect unto themselves, versus things that feel unfinished and like you need to sorta dick with them more in order to like, [laughs] feel satisfied?
And like, often, I mean my experience is that sometimes when I watch or read something that seems fully realized, I don’t need or want fanfiction about it because it just feels like, “They did it! They achieved the thing!” Right? And a lot of times the things that make me go “Well what would happen to him next?” Or this or that or the other, those questions come up because the text was not complete unto itself.
So maybe that’s, maybe that’s a different thing than you’re talking about, but I couldn’t help but connect it in my mind and be like, some of those burning questions, sometimes I experience that…maybe a failure is too strong of a word, but as like, a gap in the text that, I still like it, but makes it not perfectly spherical and smooth and, you know? [laughs]
B: Right.
ELM: Yeah.
B: It’s interesting you say that, because I’ve found that, the same way I have two camps of reading, I have two camps of writing fanfic, which is that like, I have that “I gotta fix this, this has so much promise but it’s unrealized, I gotta do something,” [FK laughs] but lately I’ve also been writing, I’ve mostly been writing fic that is of canons that I really, really admire, and I simply just want to stay in that world a little longer. You know? [ELM and FK mm-hmm] And so I want to honor that text by just sticking with it for a while. And so, it’s a different approach, and I get something different out of it.
ELM: I’m glad to hear you say this, because I feel like there’s like, a hundred thousand posts on Tumblr that assert what Flourish just said, and I don’t think everyone is writing fanfiction for that reason, I think there’s a bunch of different ways to be, you know?
FK: I wasn’t trying to say it was the only way to be, [laughs] I was just connecting those…
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, no, those posts are trying to say it’s the only way to be. It’s like…
FK: Yeah, they’re bad. You shouldn’t say that there’s one way to be in fanfiction, ‘cause if you do you’re inevitably wrong.
ELM: Yes. OK, so, we are coming close to time, and while I would love to keep talking about OFIC, I also wanna make sure we have a chance to talk to you about your classes that you’re teaching.
B: Yeah!
ELM: So I know that you’ve done this before, but you’re about to embark on maybe a bigger project?
B: So, I’m hosting another round of The Fanauthor Workshop, I hosted the first round in 2017, as an independent study in my MFA. And so, it was very much a, I was given the time, space, and freedom to do this cool thing that was helping me understand teaching with fandom as a tool, and also like, running a creative writing workshop. It went really, really, really well. I had a great time, I think all of the participants had a great time, the participants have gone on now to do MFAs, to continue writing original stuff.
In that first round, it was 10 weeks and everybody workshopped two pieces, original and a fanfiction piece. In the current iteration of The Fanauthor Workshop it’s just one round, and everybody workshops either fanfiction or original fiction of some kind. Basically whatever they want.
And so that’s starting in two weeks. I’m really excited about it. Ideally I will host, like, four a year, two in spring and two in fall, but I’ll have to see how my life is in fall. [laughs] Because I, I did get accepted into another residency that’s kind of like, smack in the middle of where I wanted to do that, and it’s, ah, really in the middle of nowhere with no cell service at all. [laughs]
FK: Whoo!
ELM: Wow, oh man. That’s exciting. So I’m really curious, there’s a lot of commentary right now in the broader MFA space, like literary fiction communities, talking about workshops. Like there was that book, Craft in the Real World, that prompted a lot of discussion, right, and talking about the, like, inherent whiteness and white structuring of workshops, the kind of like, the ones where you’re not allowed to speak, right? Which is the ones I’ve experienced, I’m sure we’ve actually probably all experienced.
And so that’s, that’s I feel like a bigger conversation happening on that side, and then in fandom you have the, “You can’t say anything negative ever about anything because it’s violence,” right? So like, I’m wondering [laughs] how, how you sitting in between these worlds are thinking about, and how you structure your workshops and how you think about feedback.
B: So…I have, I have a pretty structured workshop model that I actually got from Garth Greenwell in a workshop that I did with him, where…
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, you did a workshop with him? That’s so, oh my God, that’s so, that’s so glamorous!
B: [overlapping] Yeah, I did two, he’s so cool! He’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, if anybody has an opportunity to work with him, he’s phenomenal.
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, I believe it! Yeah. [FK laughs]
B: And his workshop method is almost wholly descriptive. So, the first session of workshop, he goes through and he defines, like, certain craft elements. So like, style, tone, character, conflict, and so he goes through and he defines all of those, and then during workshop, he just asks, you know, “How would you define the style of this piece?” And so, I really firmly believe in descriptive feedback, because I think you can do a lot with just knowing the way people have read your work, and being able to control a little bit more how they read and how they interpret what you’re trying to say, and then he goes into the cone of silence, which I, I am not, I don’t believe silence is ever a good idea. If the writer chooses to remain silent, that’s up to them, but like, I would never force silence on a writer.
FK: So just to, just to clarify for anybody who has not been part of a writing workshop, the cone of silence is when the author of the piece has to sit silently while everybody else discusses their piece.
B: And a lot of people prefer that, because they know that if they start to talk, they’re going to maybe defend the piece, and that’s something that, like, there’s a fine line between defending yourself and trying to explain or justify your choices in like, open discussion. But for the most part in all of the classes that I’ve ever taught, I’ve never come across somebody who wanted to defend the piece. Mostly they just wanna have a conversation, like, “Here’s what I was trying to do, how did I miss?” You know? Like, they’re curious about that. So, like, I really believe in the power of students. [laughs]
ELM: Look, I have had an experience where I wanted to defend it, and I wasn’t allowed to.
B: Right.
ELM: And the professor then defended it, and I was like, “I win and you all lose!” [FK laughs] So, I mean, I think, Flourish, I’ve told you about this before, but it was also, I was a senior in college and there were some freshmen and sophomores, and I was writing about adults. There were scenes set in bars, and I’d been to bars!
FK: [laughing] And they had not been to bars?
ELM: [overlapping] And actually there’s like…yeah, I’m not saying that there’s a huge difference between an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old, but there are different life experiences, and the professor was like, “No this is exactly what going to bars is like.” And I was like, “Yes.”
FK: “Thank you, I have been in one.”
ELM: It was such a like, you know, they weren’t saying the writing was bad, they were just like, “I don’t think this situation is realistic,” and that’s the thing where I wanted to be like, “No no no no no, this is based on something that actually happened, and happens every day.” Anyway. I’m gonna stop defending this story from 15 years ago. [all laugh]
B: Well, and I think, so if you are of a marginalized identity, and you have a bunch of people who are not part of that identity trying to nitpick that experience, that’s where the cone of silence is really destructive, that’s where you get to say like, “I’m sorry, you have no idea what you’re talking about, let’s move on.” And I think it’s, it’s the job of a good workshop leader to recognize when these conversations are derailing, when they’re not helpful, when they’re offensive, and to either move on from that, or drill down into it to have a more productive discussion. Like, “What are you actually saying? What does it mean for a piece to be realistic? Is it the writer’s obligation to portray a bar in a realistic way?” [ELM laughs] “Is that what this piece is asking for?”
ELM: Marginalized identity: bar-goer. [B and FK laugh] Yeah, exactly, I mean like, it’s a silly example, but a more serious one, and I’ve known people who’ve had this experience of being, like, the only person of color in a class, with a white professor who, when people start questioning details and the white professor doesn’t have the life experience to say, “Oh actually that’s exactly what it’s like to be…” right, you know? Like, my professor had been to bars. [FK laughs]
B: There are many teachers out there who are still of the lean back, watch everybody fight it out, and then once everybody’s kind of done, just kind of imparting the diagnosis on the piece. A lot of teachers still do that. I have a very laid-back kind of approach, but I’m still very involved, and try to make things stay as on-task as possible. And, you know, because it’s really important to me that everybody gets the feedback that they need, and not a bunch of BS that is just useless fodder, you know?
ELM: Right, or personal taste, or lack of experience, yeah yeah yeah.
B: [overlapping] Personal taste, or people learning to read, and that’s a lot of the conflict of workshop is that the person being workshopped is learning to write and the people workshopping are learning to read, and developing those kind of skills that teach what a workshop is supposed to teach.
ELM: Well so here’s my question, this is, these are, some of these people are writing fanfiction. Do you…have you experienced, or do you anticipate, any of the kinds of things people in fanfiction yell at each other for, like someone calling something out of character, or, you know what I mean? Like, all the very specific fanfiction things that I think people would argue about, right? I mean I guess that’s a version of like, “I don’t agree with your details.” You know? Like, “That’s not realistic, he would never go to a bar.” [FK and B laugh] And you’re like, “He and I have gone to the bar, me and this character.” [ELM and FK laugh]
B: Well, so, my approach is always, the first thing you do when you read a piece is figure out what is the piece trying to be? And you assess it based on that. And that’s a way to circumvent, you know, like…inputting your personal taste and perspective. Because this is a pan-fandom experience, I don’t anticipate a lot of people being in the same fandoms?
ELM: You never know, some of these fandoms are large. [laughs]
B: Yeah, so, I mean, if that does happen, I imagine that it will come from a place of sincerity, and you know, wanting a piece to be better, but it’s also the responsibility of the writer to know when to reject feedback. You know? And when to say like, “OK, I heard what you had to say, but you’re wrong.” So there’s a balance, I think.
ELM: That makes total sense. I mean, I’m sure this is like…do you work with a beta when you write fic?
B: Sometimes. It depends on how much patience I have. [laughs]
ELM: Oh wow.
B: If I just wanna get it, [ELM and FK laugh] just wanna yeet it into the world, which for the most part I do, but sometimes yeah.
ELM: You use the yeet button on AO3 to post those works? [all laugh]
B: Just, just get it off of Google Docs, I’m done with it. [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Feature! I’ve got a feature request for the devs of the AO3. [B laughs] Add, add a yeet button.
FK: [laughing, overlapping] YEET!
ELM: No “Are you sure you want to proceed?” Just oof! Yeah. That’s, that’s really funny. Um, yeah, absolutely, I mean I think that, I’m sure that, and Flourish, you’ve experienced this as well, working with betas, like, establishing those expectations up front: What are you trying to do? Right?
FK: Yes.
ELM: I think seems critical.
FK: Definitely. Well, OK, so I know that this round of workshop is like, full, and you’re doing it, it seems like it’s gonna be great. If people want to take part in future workshops, where could they find out about this?
B: Um, so I post updates on The Fanauthor Workshop, OFIC, and my writing coaching services on my newsletter, my “lowkey writing-related newsletter,” which [laughs] is very, very lowbrow, just, just the basic updates, and I also, I usually write an article about craft of some kind that’s been on my mind. And that is betts.substack.com. I also have The Fanauthor Workshop has a Twitter and a Tumblr that I post updates on that as well, but the newsletter is the best way to just like, get it to your attention. The next one, if I end up doing a fall round, will be probably mid-October, with applications opening in September or late August.
ELM: OK awesome, we’ll put all of those links in the show notes.
B: Cool.
ELM: And then hopefully everyone can go sign up!
B: Yeah, I have a lot of things, and I hope it’s not, like, totally overwhelming, but this is my life now! This is, this is my chosen life! [FK laughs]
ELM: It’s amazing, I’m so, like, you know, this is a great, this is a pandemic reflection success story, I feel like. So many people are like…
FK: Seriously.
ELM: “I had time to reflect, and I just fucking hate my job.” Then like, that’s the end of the story and you’re like, “OK.” [laughs] “Sorry.” You know? So it’s really nice to hear someone, it seems like a lot of things are clicking together for you on this front, and that’s so exciting, so.
B: Whether I’ll make enough money to live doing, pursuing what I love, I don’t know! [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about that. [laughs]
B: But I’m doing it, so that’s, that’s the goal.
ELM: Yeah! No, and you get to go to these amazing retreats! In the middle of nowhere.
B: [overlapping] Yeah. I’ve been very, very lucky. [FK laughs] They’re, they’re a pain in the butt to apply to, because they all have application fees, and they all have different requirements, but once you get into one, it’s totally worth it. Because you like, I get so much done at writing residencies, so yeah. I highly recommend them, and workshops that you can apply to, like, I think, I think they’re great resources.
ELM: Well I, you know I’ve got all my X-Men fics, so, I should just go send it.
FK: Ya should, though. [all laugh] All right. It has been wonderful talking with you, Betts, thank you so much for coming on.
ELM: Yeah.
B: Thank you for having me, this has been fantastic!
ELM: I hope we can have you on again as these things continue to develop! So, and we’ll make sure everyone has links to everything, and especially OFIC. Congrats again on the first issue, it is so good.
B: Thank you so much.
[Interstitial music]
FK: It is always a pleasure to have Betts on the podcast, and I can say that now because she’s now been on twice!
ELM: [a choked laugh] Ah, that was great. That was very interesting. I also like the part where we kinda grilled her and she handled it very gracefully. [FK laughs]
FK: Well look, we wouldn’t have grilled her if we didn’t know she was gonna have really good answers.
ELM: That’s true, that’s true.
FK: It’s a compliment. [ELM laughs] All right, so. At the top of this episode we talked about how OFIC is supported by patrons, including Elizabeth.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah.
FK: And now it’s time for us to talk about how we too are a Patreon-supported fandom endeavor. The way that we make this podcast happen is with the monetary and emotional support of listeners like you. [laughs]
ELM: Emotional, Flourish, that’s asking so much of people.
FK: But they give it freely! In their, you know, right? Anyway. If you would like to support us monetarily, you can go to Patreon.com/Fansplaining, and we have many different levels of patron, you can get all kinds of different rewards, ranging from special episodes, to a cute little enamel pin, to an every once in a while Tiny Zine that will physically show up in your mailbox, so if you’ve got some cash to spare, head over there and do that.
ELM: OK, burying the lede, it’s not just general special episodes, there is in fact a new special episode that you can have access to right now.
FK: Yeahhhh!
ELM: It’s about Flourish’s self-insert fanfiction, Flourish/Erik, comma, the Opera Ghost, comma, the Phantom of the Opera.
FK: This fanfiction does not exist, and… [ELM laughs] it is not what the episode is about, but the episode is about The Phantom of the Opera.
ELM: It is about Erik, comma, the Opera Ghost, comma, the Phantom of the Opera.
FK: Yes, also, also known as Elizabeth’s greatest Halloween costume ever.
ELM: Yeahhh.
FK: So you can get a taste of this.
ELM: I’m sorry, you, do you know my other Halloween costumes? That’s false. [FK laughs] First of all, I was Cruella De Vil twice, and I think I got that to a T. Like, I really knocked that look out of the park.
FK: You, you know, I really would like to know more about your Halloween costumes, and maybe we can discuss this on another episode, because, uh, I’m curious. ‘Cause you seem like you’ve got some themes.
ELM: Well, no, I just gotta say, you know my mom, she’s extremely talented at all arts, crafts, and construction work.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: She’s sewed some great costumes. Undeniable.
FK: Good job to your mom. OK. If you support us monetarily, you can get access to that exciting new special episode. If you can’t support us monetarily, what else can you do?
ELM: [laughs] Well, there are a few things you can do. Most importantly you can share the podcast, we, as you know, we have full transcripts, we have our intrepid transcriptionists typing away—
FK: [overlapping] Woooo!
ELM: —including that Phantom episode, one of our transcriptionists took that on, we want to make sure that every single episode is readable as well, so, sharing those transcripts, you know, sharing the episode in general, subscribing on the podcatcher of your choice, I don’t even know if people still say podcatcher, but we’re gonna keep saying it.
FK: [overlapping] We do! We’re gonna keep saying it ‘til someone tells us to stop!
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, we’re gonna say, say it ‘til [laughs] someone says stop saying that word.
FK: [overlapping] We’re gonna be like, we’re gonna be like people who talk about blogrolls. We’re gonna be like…
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, look, you could still have a blogroll! Isn’t like, your Tumblr follow list like a blogroll, really?
FK: No.
ELM: It kind of is!
FK: Well, I mean, it could be, but…no. Anyway.
ELM: If you have the Tumblr theme that shows who you follow, it’s almost exactly like a blogroll.
FK: All right. I guess that’s…
ELM: But with images and not with words.
FK: I guess that’s true.
ELM: Anyway. [laughs] You just haven’t been on Tumblr for a while, so you’ve forgotten what it’s like. [FK laughs] It’s pretty cool over there. Other than sharing the podcast, you can get in touch with us. Share your thoughts. You could do that at fansplaining@gmail.com, Fansplaining.com’s our website, we have a submission box there, that’s where we get a lot of our commentary, a lot of the questions that we answer, fansplaining.tumblr.com is the other main place people send in questions, written ones, anon is on, just try to be nice please. We’re not gonna go in the tags, like Betts, looking for hate, so, you know. I don’t know if you go in the tags, I don’t do that.
FK: I don’t do that.
ELM: No, I don’t, I don’t…
FK: Life’s too short.
ELM: You can also find us on every other social media platform, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, that’s not every other one, and! Our favorite way to get in touch, that we don’t get nearly enough of, is leaving us a voicemail so we can include other voices! That’s 1-401-526-FANS, you don’t have to say your name, you can remain anonymous, you can use a pseud, and we will play your voice, and respond to your question or comment at a future date!
FK: Yeaahh! OK! Well, I don’t know what else we have to say, I think that’s it!
ELM: [laughs] That is it! We’ve concluded, business concluded, episode concluded.
FK: All right. I will talk to you later, Elizabeth Minkel.
ELM: OK, bye Flourish Klink! [FK laughs]
[Outro music]