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.