Editing Lois McMaster Bujold (section)

== Relation to fan fiction ==
Bujold has generally been supportive of [[fan fiction]] written about her characters and universe. Amy H. Sturgis, in her essay "From Both Sides Now: Bujold and the Fan Fiction Phenomenon",<ref name="fan_fiction_essay">{{cite book |last1=Sturgis|first1=Amy H.|title=Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy |chapter=From Both Sides Now: Bujold and the Fan Fiction Phenomenon|editor1-last=Croft|editor1-first=Janet Brennan|date=2013 |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=978-0-7864-6833-1 |pages=16–25}}</ref> notes that this is unusual for writers of Bujold's generation, most of whom are opposed to fan fiction. Sturgis relates this to Bujold's own production of ''[[Star Trek]]'' and [[Sherlock Holmes]] fan fiction early in her life, which Sturgis saw as an apprenticeship for her professional writing career.

Bujold herself ties her appreciation of fan fiction to her appreciation of "active" readers. To her, good readers are the "unsung collaborators" who make the story work, by actually constructing the world and characters in their heads. Books, to her, don't actually exist until they enter the reader's head and grow there. And sometimes, the characters and stories in a book grow so much that they escape the writer's original confines and become fan fiction. To Bujold, great literature is never "sterile", stopping with only what the original author wrote.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Sidelines: Talks and Essays|last=Bujold|first=Lois McMaster|year=2013|chapter=The Unsung Collaborator}}</ref> She further believes that fan fiction gives authors a unique chance to see into the minds of those "invisible collaborators", the readers.<ref name="sidelines_fan_fiction">{{Cite book|title=Sidelines: Talks and Essays|last=Bujold|first=Lois McMaster|year=2013|chapter='Here's Looking At You, Kid...': On Fan Fiction}}</ref>

Despite this, she no longer reads fan fiction about her own characters due to legal and financial concerns, "fascinating as [she] finds it".<ref name="sidelines_fan_fiction" />