liquorandptsdvarietyshow:

One last thing about fanfic as a medium/community dynamic is that I remember once when I was posting Gulfport in instalments to a fan comm on LJ, someone made the very kind comment that they felt like someone clamouring at the docks for instalments of the latest Dickens story. I thought that was very generous of them considering my meagre offering, and also hilariously meta considering how consistently every character in VC wanks on about Dickens (I THINK ANNE RICE MIGHT LIKE HIM), but also, it really made me think. Writing for a fan comm was a really specific experience. I really liked the challenge of making every instalment dynamic and paced right while being subject to character restrictions and the like, and also writing to a regular, waiting audience on a vague schedule. Again, I think these challenges occur in many other writing gigs, but my first real experience of that was in fanfic.