Dear Diary...The Year Was 1986...

[morgandawn]

The year was 1986, and Star Wars fans were discussing their changing fandom, the impact of commercialization on fandom and the role of fandom in general. The widespread adoption of the Internets was still 10 years in the future. 

[They continued]  the discussion on the sometimes differences between writing-for-pro and writing-for-fun. I think the disdain many have for "amateur" lit can be traced back, at least, to Dr. Samuel Johnson with his "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money", from BOSWELL'S LIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. Add that attitude to our culture's use of money to describe a person's worth, and you end up with non-profit writing being considered worthless (even for blockheads!). Or suitable only for women... Poetry, for example, which makes very little money in  our culture, is considered effeminate by many. Sometimes, when I can't reconcile my own feelings on the subject, I think of fannish writing as folklore. Like folk songs and folk tales, fanlit fills a need of our social group, it grows and changes with that need and with time  and the concept of marketing it does not apply. And just as the concept of growing and catching what we eat, weaving and sewing the clothes we wear, providing directly for our survival has given way to working for money so we can buy what we need to physically survive, so, too, food for mental thought has passed out of the hands of those who use it directly into the hands of those who sell it back to us. What we fans provide for ourselves is self-entertainment, a mighty rare beast these days."   Southern Enclave #13 (1986)