Oh cousinjean, don't go!
How does a post that reads Screw it. Y'all win get 450+ comments in response? Well, here's elements of the original post, as preserved by Lee Goldberg:

I've gotten a lot of e-mails over the past year asking if and when I'm going to finish both Dancing Lessons and my sequel to The Butterfly Effect. Believe me when I say that nobody is more depressed about the unfinished state of my fan fiction than I am. But the cold, hard reality is that I have bills and student loans to pay, an actual paying writing career to try my damnedest to launch, and an eventual marriage to save and plan for. The simple fact is that there is no more room in my life for fan fiction. I've tried to make room. I have. But it's just not happening.

I realize that a lot of people will probably judge me pretty harshly for the following, but I'm just desperate enough not to care. I'm offering to sing for my supper, so to speak, and I don't see the shame in that. So here's my proposal: if every reader who has read and enjoyed my fan fiction over the years will donate the amount that they would expect to pay for a hardback novel (and I've written the equivalent of several novels in the course of my fanfic career), then I will be able to take a year off to write full time. This means that not only would I be able to finish the original novels that are languishing on my hard drive; I would also be able to finish my fan fiction.

Basically, what I'm asking for is monetary support from my reader base in helping me get my career as a professional storyteller off the ground. In return, if at least half of my goal is met, I promise to continue the work that has gained me a following in the first place. I'm asking you to buy me time to write.

If you're willing to do this, in addition to finished WIPs you will also have my eternal gratitude and a mention in the acknowledgements of my first published novel. If you're not, that's understandable, and all I ask is that you never again ask me how my WIPs are coming.


This reminds me of the Lily Tomlin joke. As a child, she was told to take out the garbage and so walked into the living room to get to the kitchen but while in the living room spotted the shelves of Reader's Digest condensed books, the wagon-wheel coffee table, the Emmet Kelly Jr. figurines, the fake Duraflame log in the fireplace and she thought to herself, "Take out the garbage? Where to begin?"

There's the asking for money for fanfic, of course, which even other fanficcers -- well, most of them -- know is a red flag that can bring howling lawyers to the doorstep. (Of course, 'cuz also has a few defenders who say that she's not really technically asking for money for fanfic, just that money will allow fanfic to be created maybe somehow magically, because that line of reasoning will surely lead to a summary judgment against the copyright holders). There's how much she's asking for -- ten times what the author of an actual hardcover novel gets, per reader. (Never mind the peonage involved in writing a licensed Buffy book.) There's this precious bit of snottiness: "If you're willing to do this, in addition to finished WIPs you will also have my eternal gratitude and a mention in the acknowledgements of my first published novel. If you're not, that's understandable, and all I ask is that you never again ask me how my WIPs are coming." Give me money, or I'll dictate how you may speak to me! And of course, there's the fact, mentioned in the comments, that one of the fanfic she mentions as hers actually has a number of co-authors who were not privvy to her passing of the begging bowl. Her actual dollar amount goal is unnamed, but if she meets "half" of it, she'll finish the fanfics.

Then there is the elimination of the post and its replacement by, not an apology, but a passive-aggressive whine, and then, ANOTHER POST, in which she declared 'Goodbye cruel world [of fandom]' and alludes to various unnamed disabilities and the massive size of her pride with its lack of a new, improved, coating that makes it easy to swallow.

Oh, and she actually did get some money out of some dumb twats too. Meanwhile, God forbid one of you people send me a dollar, or, fuck, spend what you would expect to pay for a hardcover novel, minus 37%, and actually GET A HARDCOVER NOVEL OUT OF IT!

Or, as lightscape put it on her MUSH, re: me, but virtually any working writer or any stripe and their shit jobs can be swapped in:

"Maybe if I hadn't watched Nick almost literally type his fingers to the bone writing stupid bullshit for horrible people, meeting daily - sometimes multiple daily - deadlines, for years and years while also somehow maintaining the stamina and creative energy to crank out several novels, countless short stories and articles, for many years working harder than anybody who doesn't actually work down at the docks hosing corpses off of cranes works, for which effort he is rewarded with a life of poverty and a faceful of bullshit from every piece of shit fanboy on the net who doesn't see why she shouldn't be paid to do nothing but dick around writing fan fiction on account of how she's so talented and all."
"He begs on the internet all the time. For people to buy his damn books."
"He doesn't go out and ask people to pay him for what nobody should be paid and nobody should pay, not to mention needs to pay."
"And that's just the /personal/ part of why I'm so mad. ;P"


Personally, I'm not even mad. Once you've stumbled across a Harry Potter/Tyler Durden fanfic, you know that this particular manifestation of fannish activity is a race to a bottom that left the pits of hell far behind long long ago.

What annoys me is the flounce. In it, she writes that she wishes to speak in the defense of anybody who takes a chance and asks for help in a society where we're expected to help ourselves.

The actual chance-taking in this society comes not from member of a privileged strata (and anyone who counts student loans and the class expectation to save for a marriage ceremony among their woes is privileged) asking for a few thousand $25 donations to take a year off, but from those who actually risk ridicule (do-gooder, Pollyanna, bleeding heart!) and pain (double shifts in the ER, firing or manhandling by Pinkertons at the factory gates, diving head first into flaming buildings) to create a society where people can actually help one another. I'm sure we all know people who worked eighty-hour weeks and sucked down noodles and potato chips for a couple years straight in order to fund their own nursing school educations; people who have been imprisoned for weeks or months and who have been tortured by the police during campaigns to bring the rudiments of democracy to their home country; people who have faced enormous physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as toddlers and kids and who managed to, with help from friends, grow up to be fairly well-adjusted lovers and parents; people who'll go without eating so that a friend or relation won't have to go without eating and a roof over their heads...I mean, I'm just summarizing some of the life stories from people on my goddamn AIM buddy list. If a guy who never even leaves his fucking house can meet people like this, the planet surely must be lousy with them.

But good ol' cousinjean? Fuck it, she can't even take the risk of finishing a book without being paid for it up front by Internet suckers. Nor can she take the risk of growing the fuck up. "There are some of you whom I'm sincerely sorry I've disappointed or embarrassed by my request. The rest, not so much." Oh, we're not disappointed, Jeaniebeanie, we knew you had it in you. If not you, well, then someone else. See, if not for people like you -- the incorrigible, self-involved, parasite -- the people I describe above wouldn't have to bust their asses in three just to keep the world spinning for your sake.