Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Last of Fandom

I came home last night (from having drinks with my coworkers at a sports bar) to an email from the editorial director: 
my fandom ms is on its way to the printer! 
And the director loved it. 
Whew.
Until the director signs off, there's the possibility that the writer (me!) might have to make some substantive changes.
But no. 
The director wrote,
"It's your best work yet. It’s fascinating, fun, funny, well organized, deeply researched, and beautifully written—and so darn smart. And profound, actually, the material you're working with."
"Profound", I suppose, because as I've written about before here, I chose––due to limited space and the age of the intended readers (thirteen to eighteen years old)––to focus on the theme of how fans create all sorts of "fix-its" to balance mass media's skewed representation of underrepresented social groups. 
(The overarching theme is HOW they do that--the various social and electronic technologies they use, invent, share, etc.)

In the ms, I only touched lightly on the facts that fandom is just as much, or even more, about erotic desire and that it's a "gift giving" economy that flourishes in capitalism---(though that's changing a little as fans find ways to charge money for their works...).


Because I skimmed over those fascinating and central parts of fandom, I felt the book was maybe lacking, but the director's enthusiastic review let me believe that it's good, as it is.
I'm relieved, honestly.
And, of course, secretly pleased with myself.
   
Now I'm off to a house-cleaning gig.

6 comments:

The Crow said...

Congratulations, Fresca! Wishing you much continued success, too!

Frex said...

Thanks, Crow! I'll be sending your grandson a copy when they're ready---will still be a couple months, at least.

Not sure what's next...
--Fresca

ArtSparker said...

Congrats on the double happiness dusting off of hands day - completion of book, and presumably completion of cleaning gig. Those are rare moments in life when things have come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Fresca said...

Thanks, that's true, Sparker.
A satisfactory conclusion---for one moment.
Then it all spins off again, and on we go!

Laura B said...

Congratulations on your book being done, and the insightful comments from the director! In fact, the director's comments could pretty much describe all your writing!

Fresca said...

Eh, that's very nice of you to say, Laura. :)