If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. - Barry Lopez, "Crow and Weasel"

I have a story to tell you.

When I was six years old, I asked for a typewriter for my birthday.

It was actually a word processor, but before the times of Windows 97 and netbooks it was the best thing since a pen and paper, and it even had a little screen and a tiny harddrive where it would save your files for a short period of time.

I remember walking in the living room one day and commanding my mother to write out as I dictated my current story idea to her. And that story was a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan-fiction. Mind, it was surely terrible, but I loved nothing more than sitting with my mother, chattering about a show we had in common and adored, as I pulled out the freshly printed pages and penciled in illustrations that helped bring that story to life. My story.

Storytelling is instinctual, and it runs deep to the core of being human, and it's a constant that has adjusted itself to our very basic evolution. If anything, it has actively effected our evolution. Between writing epic tomes that strike deep at the very nature of our existence or simply recounting that funny thing your cousin did when she was drunk at last year's family reunion, there is not a single person in a single country in a single village over the length of this vast world who has not, in one way or another, told a story.

Yet, in the time of big-name publishing houses and multi-million dollar book sales and vicious battles over the nature of copyright, this simple aspect of human existence has instead evolved into something that must be owned. It must be marked, it must be labeled, it must be sold and it must be made completely known that this precious book is one in a million, and it must be placed on a pedestal above all other stories because it is just that special.

That being said, let's get back to fanfiction.

As someone who was (obviously) writing fanfiction before I could even understand what copyright law was, it's difficult for me to grasp the absolute abhorrence many writers have for this phenomena. We write our books, we put them on the market, we say to people, "Come with me; I have a story to tell you, I have a world to show you. Let me take you on an adventure, and let me make you laugh, cry, love and hate every moment of it. Let me into your heart and soul and we can share this moment, just you and I."

And people do. They buy books; they laugh, they cry, they beg for more when the story has ended to soon. And then some of them take what they have in their hearts and begin to tell their own stories. Whether or not they do it well is irrelevant, because what matters is that they loved it. "Speak not of a man who loved wisely," Shakespeare once wrote, "but too well."

Is fanfiction wise? Probably not. From my experience, it's one heck of time waster. But some would say the same about facebook, and twitter, and a million other things humans in the modern age do to bide away their time. But it is something, ultimately, that is born from love. Once you have drawn someone so deeply into an experience as writers hope to draw our readers, we then expect them to never imagine experiences of their own. And as writers, who are we to say in what manner they wish to experience these stories, when we, ourselves, draw from our own experiences and from other stories to make what we then sell?

Don't get me wrong - there is a fine line between fanfiction as a hobby and those who plagiarize, and common sense generally dictates to the hundreds upon hundreds of fans that what they are doing is for fun, not profit. But see, us writers are lucky. We get to do what we love, and we get to do it every day. And then we forget that there are those out there who don't - people who get up every morning to go work somewhere they hate with people they can't stand, because they need to pay the bills. And when they come home, they want to escape into a world that they love, even if it's not one they've necessarily created. And they've chosen our worlds to escape to.

Why is that so offensive to writers, when it should be an honour?

One day, I would love to visit Paris. And one day I will take a picture of the Eiffel Tower, and I have no intention of asking the man who built it if I can do so. And then I will show people that picture, and the story I will tell will be about my experience. It will be my adventure, even if I wasn't the one who created the world and the centerpiece in which it takes place.

At the heart of it all, isn't that all fanfiction is? Good or bad, deep or shallow, it is nothing but a photograph of the reader's experience. And I have seen photographs that are much more haunting than the subject of it alone would be, and I am glad whomever created the subject did not take the time to moan about copyright.

But I think, most of all, what people have forgotten is what I remember from being that six year-old writing a Star Trek story; adults are just kids all grown up. And we love to play. We love to pretend. We love to wrap ourselves into a world not of our making because, let's face it, sometimes this world really doesn't cut it. And if your story is special enough to enchant the child-soul of its readers to the point that they want to live in it a little while, then you have succeeded in your goal. Don't worry about them doing it right or doing it justice, because they know it's still your story. They just want the chance to experience it with you; they want the fleeting moment of calling a tiny aspect of your story their own. They want to feel that they were, however artificially or however small, a part of it.

I have a story to tell you. And when I'm done, I want you to know a little part of that story will always belong to you, too.