Fanfic Writers' Virtual Water Cooler

[Falcon Horus]

Honestly FH, that kind of attitude can get you kicked off (banned) very quickly. It's best just to avoid those threads (they have a special forum all to themselves).

Hence why you won't find me there any time soon... don't worry.

[Whytewytch]

I've written a few paragraphs of fic, but it's been all scripts all the time for the last several months. More of the same over the summer if all goes according to plan. But I've at least opened and edited the two fics I've got working. But I've got to do the work that pays the bills first.

I feel your pain on this one. Much as I'd like writing to pay the bills one day, that day is not upon me yet. Also, my youngest child, who still has six years until graduation, has no concept of "leave Mom alone unless you're bleeding--she's writing". Luckily, he goes to live with his grampa this summer. I'd love to see it become an every summer thing--keeps them both occupied (and maybe summer can become a big writing time for me! ).

At any rate, time for me to pop off and get in my exercise, then shower and out the door to RWA. Barring incident, I should have a few hours after the meeting and lunch to do some more writing on the sci-fi romance. It was supposed to have been completed by December of last year, but life got in the way. Frankly, I'll be happy to finish (not even polish and submit) it by December of this year. My word count shows me at a little over 1/3 of the way through writing, but I figure by the time I finish, I'll have so many adds and deletes, I don't think it'll matter; besides, no big deal if it's 60K instead of 80K since I don't plan on submitting to New York. I'll either be self-pubbing or submitting to a smaller e-pub.

[SF_and_Coffee]

This is to the GG: http://www.grantvillegazette.com/ This is main 1632 website: http://1632.org/

As if you had time for more bulletin boards, you might take a look at Baen's Bar. Because new fic is posted and critiqued, it's not an open forum in the sense that you can search for things using Google, but is open in the sense that anyone can sign up. There are a lot of different topics, and the vast majority of the posters tend to the ultra-conservative, but if you stay out of the politics, there's some nice stuff there.

Seaboe

I briefly used to be a Barfly years ago, but I bailed precisely because of the ultra-conservatism. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal hippie who is currently considering a career switch to non-profit social justice work/activism, possibly up to and including a stint in seminary for a directly-related master's degree. My head would explode over there.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

I confess that, over the years (I've been a barfly since 2000), my time there and the fora I read have become more and more restricted. Part of it is that most of my barfly friends also don't spend a lot of time there anymore.

1632 is what brought me there in the first place, and it's what keeps me coming back. I really like the idea that any modern tech you propose has to be vetted (is it possible with 17th century tech? does anybody know how to build it?) and that there are restrictions on what the moderns have and don't have (no junkyard, for example) and who they are (no convenient military geniuses who "just happened" to be passing through).

Not even 1632 has gotten me to write fan fiction, though My contributions there have all been non-fiction.

Seaboe

[Whytewytch]

So I'm getting totally sidetracked by a show I wanted to see that is now on Netflix, Copper. It's set in the 1860s in NYC and features an Irish detective. In a way, it's distracting, as I'm really loving the show and want to watch. In another way, it's great, as it's inspirational for my Western romance, which features an Irishman in America around the same period of time--and some of the story (or at least the backstory) takes place in/just outside of some of the major cities of the East Coast at the time. No advice necessary--just wanted to share my ambivalence.

[Starfist]

I had a surprise on Thursday.

I was sorting out some paperwork, bills, insurance documents etc... And I came across some old pieces of hand written fan fic that I had started a few years ago.

[Whytewytch]

I love those kind of surprises, Starfist! I have some of my own old, hand-written fics lying about.

[Starfist]

I also found a page with some opening lines of fic's in the planning stages.
I am sure that I have some more 'rough' drafts somewhere else at home.

[Princess Awinita]

Funny thing when I find old handwritten stuff I can't even understand a single letter of it. My handwriting is just that bad!

[Whytewytch]

Funny thing when I find old handwritten stuff I can't even understand a single letter of it. My handwriting is just that bad!

Oooh, that's bad. I learned a kind of shorthand in high school that I use sometimes and that can make things a bit confusing. Like, you use a "G" for "ing", an em dash for the word "the", an "S" for the "tion" sound, etc.

[Sealurk]

You know, you wait ages for notifications from Fanfiction.net and then fourteen come along at once... all from the same person favouriting/following each and every one of your fics to add to the six hundred and fifty they've already favourited/followed without a single review.

Harumph.

[Falcon Horus]

- that obviously doesn't make you happy...

It's like that fic I wrote in the Warehouse 13 fandom that gets lots of kuddo's and yet has not a single review.

[fems]

You know, you wait ages for notifications from Fanfiction.net and then fourteen come along at once... all from the same person favouriting/following each and every one of your fics to add to the six hundred and fifty they've already favourited/followed without a single review.

Harumph.

I don't really get why they favorite and follow every story, instead of just favoriting or following the author... Sometimes they even do that atop of the stories, which is just odd. Most of them also have hundreds of favorite fics, which doesn't make much sense especially if they're all in the same fandom and same pairings etc. You can't really have hundreds of favorites, you might like hundreds of stories but that's not the same as it being your favorite. Obviously these people just tick the boxes and use the favorite system (but then why also follow, especially if the stories are complete?) as their own list of fics to reread or something and never bother to clean it up and remove old/crappy ones... maybe that's their way of 'appreciating' someone's writing? Perhaps they don't know what to say other than "great, I really enjoyed your story/stories" and thus resort to this method instead?

[Ikorni]

I don't really get why they favorite and follow every story, instead of just favoriting or following the author... Sometimes they even do that atop of the stories, which is just odd. Most of them also have hundreds of favorite fics, which doesn't make much sense especially if they're all in the same fandom and same pairings etc. You can't really have hundreds of favorites, you might like hundreds of stories but that's not the same as it being your favorite. Obviously these people just tick the boxes and use the favorite system (but then why also follow, especially if the stories are complete?) as their own list of fics to reread or something and never bother to clean it up and remove old/crappy ones... maybe that's their way of 'appreciating' someone's writing? Perhaps they don't know what to say other than "great, I really enjoyed your story/stories" and thus resort to this method instead?

Or those who follow just one-shot stories when it has already been made clear that that's pretty much it....and that puzzles me.

I know, I know, there might always be a chance of a sequel, but still...

[fems]

Or those who follow just one-shot stories when it has already been made clear that that's pretty much it....and that puzzles me.

I know, I know, there might always be a chance of a sequel, but still...

Exactly! Not that I'm complaining but I think they're confusing the following with something else... like being a Twitter follower or something. Just calling them story alerts was better, although even then it still happened but not as much in my experience.

Oh and even if there's going to be a sequel then they won't get an alert unless said sequel is in the second chapter of that story, rather than its own story.