Updates and such

Right, so...still making no actual progress with writing new fic, because I just suck like that (and most of my schoolwork time has ended up going toward lesson planning). But I'm going to start working on that soon, especially to explore the differences in comments/reviews toward long chaptered fics and one-off pieces. As I've mentioned, I've only got the three Doctor Who fic, and they fall pretty easily in length ranges of really short (about 500 words), medium (about 2,000 words), and longish (about 7,500 words). The comments I've received probably do depend somewhat on the length and whether readers are interested enough to put in whatever the time commitment might be--I know I tend to avoid otherwise-interesting fics I stumble across when they're any longer than maybe 2,000 words, just because it'll take me too long to read--and I haven't really observed whether that's been the same across my other fics or not.

I have yet to complete and post a fanfic that wasn't a one-shot, though, theoretically readable in one sitting, so I have no experience with multi-part fics that could conceivably build up something of an audience over a more extended period of time and keep people coming back to read future installments. I do have just such a fic in need of editing, though, which I've mentioned before as the only one that's received zero feedback, partly because it is crazy long and maybe partly because it was kind of weird...but since I haven't given the story a good edit to smooth out what I know to be some trouble spots (specifically, minor areas where my story contradicts established canon, because it was written before said canon was aired) and haven't cross-posted it anywhere except in the original fic-exchange community, I don't have a good way of knowing why it hasn't received feedback. I should be able to get the story edited relatively quickly and begin posting it in three or four parts, probably a few days to a week apart, and see what kind of response I get. There are other variables, of course: it's a crossover, again, so all the disclaimers for other crossovers apply here, and its primary canon is from The Sarah Jane Adventures, a spinoff children's show in the Doctor Who universe. This show seems to have a much smaller fandom than that of the main Doctor Who show or the adult spinoff Torchwood, which might also narrow my possible audience.

But that's all speculation, at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, I've created a data sheet for the comments and reviews I received on my three Doctor Who fics, laying each out so that any correlations in gender, community, length/genre of fic, and nature of comment might be more easily seen. It's a long way from representing complete findings, since it's not a very large sample and I'm only presenting possible variables, not trying to control for them and thereby reach some slightly more scientific conclusions...but all the same, it might be interesting.

I've also been making a few community/fandom connections through cross-posting these fics, as well as through compiling my data sheet. I wanted to see whether it seemed to make a difference what community commenters found my fic on--if certain communities were getting me read more than others, for instance--but since all my cross-posting directed back to a single place, I didn't have an easy way of determining where people were coming from. So I had to look at their profiles to see which communities they and I shared membership in (sometimes there was more than one, in which case I included both, and sometimes there weren't any, which led me to discover that my fic had been linked in a couple different fandom newsletters). That led me to half a dozen new communities I didn't know about before that were relevant to my interests--additional places to post Doctor Who fic, mostly. I came across a community called Fanthropology, which I think is awesome, because anthropological/sociological studies of fandom fascinate me to begin with, and finding a community within fandom dedicated to just this sort of study might end up being a big help for this and future classes, beyond being interesting in its own right. Stemming from a conversation I had with severely_lupine about my fic "The Lost Boy," I was invited to participate in a long-fanfic fest centered on Remus Lupin, something I haven't really done before, so that's fun, especially since I usually just stumble across these things by accident if at all (and a deadline might actually force me to get this particular fic written).

Other mildly interesting notes: the use of the term "handwave," first by me and then by a subsequent reviewer who'd clearly read my earlier comment; it's kind of an in-fandom term already and functions as another sign of inclusion in the same discourse community, especially since it's likely to be a little confusing for someone who doesn't already know what it means. That doesn't mean we're deliberately excluding others who aren't in this discourse community, of course, but even though we don't personally know each other, it does function as a sort of shorthand, both for a slightly complicated concept and for the fact that we have these fandom things in common.

Also rather interesting how I went about determining the gender of my reviewers--Livejournal doesn't automatically say, so I did have to put in a little detective work that almost always paid off. Some people would say right on their profile, especially if they were describing themselves as "a 30-year-old wife and mother" or something, but usually I had to check other sites they’d linked to or skim through their entries, which often identified them as a mom, an aunt, a crazy cat lady, etc.

Data analysis: comments on cross-posted entries

I still haven't finished any new Doctor Who fic, but of the three I'd already written, one had only been posted to Teaspoon and ff.net, and there were at least a handful of LJ communities to which I could post the other two that I hadn't done before. So that's what I did, and now I have some new comments to analyze.

To No Splendid Phoenix Wings:
rose_cat: Awesome! It's like being in his skin and, well, burning with him ;) I just recently saw CIN for the first time, and your last two paragraphs really capture the pain he clearly feels when Rose rejects him. Very nice work :)
Pinchin_lane: Gorgeous. Very well done. :)
lorelaisquared: Awwww this is lovely and beautiful and achingly sad all at once. Nicely done.
helygen: This is excellent, a very nice look into the process and his thoughts :)
amberite: I really felt that one. Well done.
jennytork: Absolutely brilliant!
quean-of-swords*: Oooh... Nice!
the-10thdoctor: Beautiful. Absolutely perfect.
ssshunt: Oh this is very nice. I really loved it. Very well done.
goodbye2spices: This is wonderful. What an insightful glimpse into the process of regeneration and beautifully written as well. Just lovely :)

To The Lost Boy:
cecilegrey: *squee* Teddy and the Doctor! I love it! Awesome fic.
Gioia: Loved it!!!
ZiggyChaos: Brilliant! More, please?
faeriemaiden**: okay, i just re-read your fic and flailed all over myself. ALKSHDHG TEN. how is your ten so perfect, seriously.

To Too Close to the Moon:
michele72: This is well done despite the built-in impediments (which I see why you just handwaved away). The parallels between Lupin and the Doctor are nicely observed, and you do a very good job with the Doctor's voice.***
dariclone: Aww, very nice. I'm not a huge Reamus/Tonks fan, but I love this a lot. So true to the characters from both series' and I love how the action in the TARDIS takes place.
quean-of-swords: I like this! Nice parallels between Rose and Tonks. Lupin and Ten; two of my favorite characters in one place. Well done. ^^
torn-eledhwen: Excellent - great characterisation and I liked the plot. It's difficult, I think, to cross a fandom like DW where the Doctor's explicitly stated that magic doesn't exist, with HP, but it works here.
ffutures: Nice - I would have liked to see the other story.
jellocomics: I love this fic. It's got just the right amount of detail- things like Rose's accent, references to Harry Potter, and how Tonks and Rose are similar. And the romance was so subtle! :)


Notes:
* Quean-of-swords first found this LJ when I cross-posted "Too Close to the Moon"; she read more of my fic then and friended me, so she got to "No Splendid Phoenix Wings" that way rather than from one of the places I cross-posted it.
** Faeriemaiden is a close friend of mine and has been for about seven years, so she's very familiar with me and my writing.
*** Posted after I wrote this reply to an earlier comment by torn-eledhwen:

Yeeeeah, for this particular story I just decided, what the heck, I'll ignore that inconvenience since I didn't have time to address it. >_< In a fairly epic crossover I haven't written yet, though, Ten sort of keeps an eye on Teddy as he's growing up (which eventually results in them going back in time and Teddy saving his parents, which would be a major problem except it turns out they weren't really supposed to die because...something, somebody else tweaked the timeline so they would, I don't know exactly, haven't figured it all out yet), and at one point Teddy finds the whole Harry Potter series in the Doctor's library. I'm not totally sure how the Doctor will handwave this, but it'll have something to do with the fact that, well, it doesn't matter all that much that you're in a book, Teddy, because nobody's 100% in control of their lives and does it really matter whether you attribute that to fate or God or an author or chance or something? Teddy's like 13 at this point so he pretty much just accepts this explanation with a shrug, because really, what are you going to do? Although he does wonder whether Remus knew about the books, and Ten says no, Remus was already way too into existential angst and this wouldn't have helped. >_< So...yeah.

Points to consider for analysis:
-differences in comments between crossovers and oneshot--crossovers require a level of familiarity with two fandoms and canons rather than just one, and they tend to be longer and more complicated due to the difficulty of reconciling two canons that may or may not be compatible with each other. A reader's enjoyment of a crossover therefore depends on whether they're part of the fandoms in question, how far they're willing to suspend their disbelief, and how good the author is at reconciling those fandoms. Some readers just don't like crossovers on principle (although this can also be nice, because I've had a few commenters specifically say they dislike crossovers but enjoyed mine) or might take issue with how the fandoms are crossed. All of this results in a smaller readership pool for my crossovers to begin with.
-short vs. long stories, especially since there seems to be some direct correlation there--really long fics presented in one go (evidence A: my Sarah Jane Adventures crossover, which has been posted--unedited, essentially as one chunk rather than a multi-chapter fic--in more than one place) get no comments. Long fics broken into chapters and posted serially tend to get a lot, at least based on others' observations--I have none of these yet so I can't judge that personally. Fics that are too short don't get much, but there seems to be a sweet spot that garners the most (and least critical?) comments. "No Splendid Phoenix Wings" appears to hit that spot, especially with this set of cross-posts--but then, of the three fics, it was the one I posted to the most communities at one time, and "The Lost Boy" also appeared to hit this sweet spot based on the comments it received when it was first posted.
-how many new places I cross-posted, and which comments came from where--that's a little trickier, because all my cross-postings just directed people back to the original posting in my personal journal, meaning I don't have a way of easily seeing on which community each commenter found my fic. I can tell which communities each reader is a member of from their Livejournal profiles, however, which lets me make a reasonable guess, and the question is relevant for a number of reasons. Some communities are more active than others, meaning more people are likely to come across my fic, but it's also more likely to be buried more quickly below more recent posts; some are more specific than others, meaning those who come across my fic are more likely to be familiar enough with the fandom to read it (Doctor Who-specific communities rather than general-fic, or crossover-specific communities, or even a couple communities devoted to Doctor Who crossovers), but the more specific the community, the smaller it's generally likely to be. The crossovers can be posted to slightly more places--communities dedicated to Doctor Who and those dedicated to Harry Potter, rather than just one or the other--but they do have the limitations mentioned above.
-oddly, "The Lost Boy" originally got the most attention--including my first fic award--and continues to (it's still getting faved and reviewed on fanfiction.net, for instance), but in this particular go-round, it got the least number of comments. This may be due to the fact that, of the three, it had been cross-posted to the greatest number of communities previously and was therefore posted to the fewest additional communities this time. I've found a few other places to post it, though, so that may change.

All these variables mean a lot more data just from these comments than I realized I had in the first place, so I'm actually putting together a table to see if I can draw any correlations--it's not very scientific, but it might be interesting to see whether the number and kind of comments left on these three fics fall into classes by length, type, etc. I'm also including the gender of the commenter, something that can typically be determined from user profiles if it's not explicitly stated, to see if there are similarities by gender, although that may be a bit pointless since the majority of online fandom--particularly the parts of fandom that write fanfic--seems to be female anyway.

Well, to analyze data, first you need some data...

And as I mentioned, I don't have much since the forum I planned to focus on isn't as active--at least in the fanfic-specific part--as I'd thought it was (my post asking for feedback on my fic has received exactly 0 replies, even though 16 people have read it). Anyway, my focus has changed or narrowed a bit, or at least I hope it has; because I find fandom in general and fanfiction in particular fascinating as a community-based writing practice and as a discourse/literacy in its own right, I'll still be looking at that, but I'll do so in the context of my own writing in the Doctor Who fandom. I'll probably still do some of that at Gallifrey Base, but since I'm very new there and the fanfiction board isn't terribly active except for established writers, I'll be interacting elsewhere as well. I already post fanfic (well...when I finish it, and...I haven't finished one since last July. That is sad) at Fanfiction.net, a multifandom fanfic site, and at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind, a Doctor Who fanfiction site; I also maintain my own personal writing journal, which hosts all my fanfics, plus fanmixes and original writing (my original fiction is behind a friends-lock for copyright purposes, but anything published elsewhere is public). This personal journal tends to be the most versatile, since Livejournal is host to hundreds of fandom-specific communities where members can post their fanfiction for feedback, allowing me to link easily between posts there and my original posts at my journal. I've listed these cross-postings in each entry--for instance, "The Lost Boy," a Doctor Who/Harry Potter crossover, is cross-posted at two general fanfiction communities, one Doctor Who community, one Harry Potter fanfic community, two communities dedicated to Doctor Who crossovers, and two more for all crossovers.

Having my fanfics posted even at three different locations around the internet makes things a little complicated, since I get different reviews from different people at each place; that's why I started the writing journal on Livejournal in the first place, since it allowed me to gather more of my fanfic in one place and link to it there. Still, my few existing Doctor Who fics do allow me to compile some data, which I'll be able to continue with as I write more and interact in these various communities. Just from glancing over my statistics at each site, I've noticed something interesting: at ff.net, my three Doctor Who fics are about equally popular (13 reviews each for two crossovers, 9 reviews for a shorter single-fandom fic). On my personal journal, the shorter, more recently written crossover experienced decent popularity: almost 20 positive comments, a recommendation on the personal journal of someone I didn't know, and an award in the Best Crossover category at a multifandom fanfic award site. The other two have no reviews, despite having cross-posted the longer crossover to almost as many communities as the shorter one (the remaining fic hasn't been cross-posted to any communities yet). At Teaspoon, however, the situation is almost the opposite: "The Lost Boy," the crossover popular elsewhere, has 0 reviews; the longer crossover has 2, while the single-fandom Doctor Who fic has 9 positive reviews.

There are plenty of variables here, of course, like the people who happened to stumble across each fic when it was originally posted, the number of places to which I cross-posted them, the length of each fic, and so on. It does appear at first glance, though, that--if nothing else--Teaspoon is less friendly to crossovers than multifandom archives tend to be...but then, I don't really have enough data to state that at all firmly. I'd be interested in looking at this more as I write and post more fic, though, especially since I have two fics I can think of that are semi-close to being finished--one is a long crossover, and the other is a shorter single-fandom Doctor Who fic.

Today's discovery: I really don't know what I'm doing

The biggest problem, I suppose--illuminated in part by comments to my previous entry but also by trying to figure out just what kind of data I can bring to class tomorrow--is that I have no idea just how I want to narrow my focus. I've gone from "fandom" to "the Doctor Who fandom" and from there to a specific site, so that at least is good, but I haven't narrowed my focus much, and that's what I'm having trouble with.

Here's the thing: what I really want to do is study fandom and the insane, messy culture it's shaped itself into. That's way, way too broad for this assignment for sure, and probably too broad for any reasonable study in general. Can I do much the same thing just by studying one segment of fandom? Sure: that's more or less what I'm doing. But that really doesn't limit my focus in any helpful way, because I'm still looking at all of fandom in microcosm. I don't have a focus because I don't know what to pick, and maybe I'm having a hard time choosing something because I don't want to choose.

I do have a few options that interest me. I could look at fandom itself as a literacy itself, a different way of approaching a text that brings with it all the elements of any other subculture. I could look more specifically at fanfiction as a literacy context, especially since it seems to me that most studies of it have been from an outside perspective, and approaching it from the inside--more critically, maybe, than otherwise--might be interesting. I could do an autoethnography of some kind based on my experiences as a fic writer, probably tracing what happens as I interact with other fic writers on the Gallifrey Base forum, work on my own fic, and receive feedback--but while that idea has the definite appeal of maybe being the easiest for me to grasp, I'm still not sure I totally understand what it would involve or how I'd collect data for that kind of project.

The real problem, I suppose, is that I didn't write this post before I got comments, instead of waiting until after. >_< Good planning on my part, there.