Mslexia

[altariel]

Do any of you read Mslexia? It is a writing magazine for women. The website is interesting, in particular the writing workshops.

The issue I just picked up (no. 31) has a couple of letters about slash and fanfiction (one anti on usual grounds of IP theft, one pro on lines of pointing similarities to Wide Sargasso Sea etc.). It seems to be the end of a longer discussion, so I wondered whether anyone had caught some of this.

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Enjoy!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

No, though I do know colleagues who read it - might snitch a look. I won't buy it because I hate the idea of a mag that only accepts contributions from women.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Hope you're able to track it down - I'll be very interested to hear more.

(Having benefited enormously from a women only college, I'm OK with affirmative action, particularly if it benefits me.)

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Last year, I think, I was in Mslexia! I did that Q&A quiz thingy, I forget what the feature's called, it's very short, and I talked about slash, although not in any deep way - it's only a few hundred words, and you just introduce what kind of writing you do (ie. the woman the month before me was talking about writing science textbooks for children). I submitted a longer article to them initially, but the editor interviewed me for the Q&A thing instead, which I'm glad about now, because the article was terrible. That was ages ago, though, and there was one letter in response, but I don't think it sparked any major discussion. Glad they're talking more about it, though. It's a good magazine.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Now that is incredibly cool - go you! I'd love to read your responses if you have a copy of it somewhere.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I subscribe to Mslexia. I've dabbled a lot in writing, both fiction and non-fiction. For years I earned dribs and drabs here and there in the Christian press before (a long story) realising I'd become an athiest. After that, I needed to find a new voice, and the courage to write from my heart without trying to please people.

I've done loads of DW fanfic - don't imagine I'll do it forever, but it's been a great way to get myself out there again, stretch my narrative skills and learn to deal with crit. It's a fascinating area. I see it very much as reclaiming common ownership of myth, which is so frequently hijacked by corporate and commercial considerations these days.

What do you write - Tolkien fic, or have you other strings to your bow?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

After that, I needed to find a new voice, and the courage to write from my heart without trying to please people.

Much sympathy and recognition on this. Not only because of my own transition away from very traditional Catholicism to agnosticism, but also because I am committing seriously to writing original fiction at the moment, and the terror of writing from the heart - never mind deciding what it is I want to write about in the first place! - is very much at the forefront of my mind at the moment.

What do you write - Tolkien fic, or have you other strings to your bow?

Tolkien fic has been the bulk of what I've been writing recently. I started out writing fic based on Blake's 7, and then moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. That's all archived here. I was lucky enough to get a couple of DS9 novels published professionally by Pocket Books, and I've recently had a few original short stories published. Right now I'm taking a summer sabbatical in the US to push through the first draft of an original novel.