Hail the Teaspoon!

[kerravonsen]

Some of you may be interested to note that I now have an account at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind.

My normal fiction page http://www.katspace.org/Fiction/Stories/KathrynAndersen is always going to have all my fic, I just thought it might be a good idea to put my Who stuff up at Teaspoon, to get a different audience. And by golly, it seems to have worked! I was putting stuff up last night, and I was astonished that, even while I was putting stories up, I got a couple of reviews already! And this morning there were a few more. Guess there must be people who haunt the "what's new" pages...

I also like the "author response" feature. And I think I've mostly got the hang of their fiction formatting rules. Though it's easier to put up drabbles than longer stories.

Comments

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I've been debating about whether I ought to archive my own Who stuff there.

[kerravonsen]

Well, I can't really advise you until I've had a bit more experience with it.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Well, if you do find that your experience leads you to endorse it/run away/have handy advice to offer, let me know. :)

[kerravonsen]

Well, the first piece of advice is to note that the system automatically adds BR tags at the end of each "hard return". This is fine if you know that it does that, but note also that if you preview more than once, it keeps on adding the BR tags, so your paragraphs get further and further apart.

I'm wondering whether I shall write a script for preparing stories for upload to Teaspoon, so that I can use it to tweak either plain-text or HTML source (since I have my stories in either one) so that I don't have to tweak them by hand during the "add story" process. Not that there's a lot of tweaking to do, but, hey, software engineer: see problem, write program.

A similar script would be good for fanfiction.net, but I've decided not to add any more stories to that -- the only reason I joined there was to broaden my audience, and it doesn't seem to have done that. Whereas, as I said, very fast feedback at Teaspoon! I suppose a single-fandom archive is more focused. And it's got more better authors there anyway. And the "most recently uploaded stories" show on the front page.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that is a useful thing to know about. Especially as I tend to flip back and forth between editing and previewing frequently, and am easily frustrated when things don't format the way I expect them to.

A similar script would be good for fanfiction.net, but I've decided not to add any more stories to that -- the only reason I joined there was to broaden my audience, and it doesn't seem to have done that. Whereas, as I said, very fast feedback at Teaspoon!

I have gotten a fairish amount of feedback on ff.net, and I kind of wish I didn't. The main reason I post there at all is because I find it lamentable that it's the first place anyone who doesn't know much about fan fiction goes in order to check it out, and yet it's full of sub-par stuff written by people with poor writing skills. Logic dictates that if I'm unhappy about that state of affairs, the thing to do is to contribute to improving it by posting stuff that, if perhaps not stunningly brilliant, has at least been proofread. But I have no desire to be part of the "community." I kind of wish I could turn off the option to leave feedback, so that I wouldn't feel guilty about not answering it.

I'd probably feel differently about Teaspoon, although I have the vague and slightly frightening impression that it's a hotbed of rabid shippers and Rosefen.

[kerravonsen]

although I have the vague and slightly frightening impression that it's a hotbed of rabid shippers and Rosefen.

It may be, but even such as they are an improvement on the morons at ff.net.
And the feedback I've gotten seems to have been equally pleased at my OldWho as at my NewWho.