On reflection, the low-status nature of ff.net shouldn’t bother me—writing fanfiction is pretty low-status in the first place. I’ll admit that appearing side by side with Sturgeon Instantiations bugs me anyway.
There is the concern that I might be one of those instantiations. Having an editorial filter has two significant benefits to me as an author: It protects me from embarrassment in the event that my work sucks, and it provides otherwise hard-to-get information about how well I’ve done. If my work is accepted at a site with a strong editorial filter, I can conclude with fairly high confidence that it is at least as good as the weakest piece on the site.
It’s remarkably hard to get comparable information from my own editing or my first readers, dunning-kruger, bias, and politeness being what they are. I’ve been burned that way before; a couple of my old pieces are complete crap, are online under my real name, and I’m afraid to try and get rid of them because of the Streisand effect.
Of course, as a reader, having an editorial filter relieves me of having to wade through the crap. The dominance of ff.net is the main reason I no longer go out of my way to read fanfiction, even though I enjoy it when it’s well-done. For example, I’ve read the Riddle of Kyon and liked it a lot, but I never would have come across it if it weren’t linked around here.
Use the internet’s famous cruelty to your advantage. Find a couple folks on here willing to read it, send them copies, and give them explicit instructions to call a turd a turd. If they like it, post it.
On reflection, the low-status nature of ff.net shouldn’t bother me—writing fanfiction is pretty low-status in the first place. I’ll admit that appearing side by side with Sturgeon Instantiations bugs me anyway.
There is the concern that I might be one of those instantiations. Having an editorial filter has two significant benefits to me as an author: It protects me from embarrassment in the event that my work sucks, and it provides otherwise hard-to-get information about how well I’ve done. If my work is accepted at a site with a strong editorial filter, I can conclude with fairly high confidence that it is at least as good as the weakest piece on the site.
It’s remarkably hard to get comparable information from my own editing or my first readers, dunning-kruger, bias, and politeness being what they are. I’ve been burned that way before; a couple of my old pieces are complete crap, are online under my real name, and I’m afraid to try and get rid of them because of the Streisand effect.
Of course, as a reader, having an editorial filter relieves me of having to wade through the crap. The dominance of ff.net is the main reason I no longer go out of my way to read fanfiction, even though I enjoy it when it’s well-done. For example, I’ve read the Riddle of Kyon and liked it a lot, but I never would have come across it if it weren’t linked around here.
Use the internet’s famous cruelty to your advantage. Find a couple folks on here willing to read it, send them copies, and give them explicit instructions to call a turd a turd. If they like it, post it.