Remixing

[kerravonsen]

Okay, I've signed up for remixthedrabble as both a remixee and a remixer. This is the first time I've signed up as a remixer; I'm hoping it won't be too hard. Part of my motivation is that it's supposed to be short, another is that I just realized that, while I've been working on various stories this year, I haven't actually finished anything since the drabbles I did for tthdrabbles in March. Rather than feeling guilty about that, I thought it would be nice to do a little ficathon as a sort of inspiration-break. Plus, a remix doesn't require plotting, since the plot is there already. Plus, having to enforce a maximum length is an interesting discipline.

Another thing I did today was put up a number of stories on my page on fanfiction.net; I decided I might as well put all my stories up there anyway, to make them easier to find. I may find I run out of energy before I manage it, but at least I made a start.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Do you think it's worthwhile posting to the pit? Most of my stuff is B7 and I'm already have it on my site and on the B7 archive. Would I get more readers there, or just mindless "u rock" comments? I've never bothered searching for fanfic there, though I know good authors like you do use it.

[kerravonsen]

I've realized that the secret of finding good fic on the pit is to look at the "favourite stories" of good authors. So I also intend to go through my reviews for fanfiction.net stories and add them to my "favourite stories" there.

My original intent in getting an account at the pit was to improve the quality of the fic there and hopefully get more readers by giving a link to my full archive. I only put a handful of stories there, ones that I felt were more likely to have sequels. But I realized that most of the readers probably wouldn't bother going off-site, and also that I have a better chance of impressing random people if ALL my fic is there, so that they know that I'm serious about fanfic, and that I'm an active author.

So part of my motivation was that I already had an account there, so I decided to use it properly rather than let it languish. There's a trade-off in these things, as always; posting in multiple places is more work, for the chance of more exposure; and it depends on the audience. I think my most popular fic on ffn is my Sentinel/Stargate crossover, which kind of doesn't surprise me all that much, because both those fandoms are more popular than B7.

What I've noticed with authors that I've been reading recently is that they post both in specialist archives and on fanfiction.net, and that they use fanfiction.net to post their first and less polished drafts. This brings them audience because people find their stories on the specialist archive, then they find the incomplete story has more chapters on ffn, so they go there, then they look at other stories the person has authored which aren't on the specialist archive. Of course, that method only works if one posts works-in-progress, which I don't do.

But posting in a specialist archive can be worth it; I'm sure I've got many more readers of my Doctor Who fic since I started posting on the Teaspoon. I don't know about B7 because I haven't finished putting my stuff up on Hip-Deep-in-Heroes, which I really must do too.

I shall just have to see how much I can keep up. Right now I'm on four archives: my own on katspace.org, the pit, Teaspoon (Doctor Who) and Hip-Deep-in-Heroes (B7). If I end up writing my epic Harry Potter AU then it would probably make sense to join Fiction Alley or some other HP archive. Or I may give up in irritation at all the work... 8-P