Another comment re A03 hits and some whinging about WIPs (mine, that is).

[shapinglight]

Further to this post about A03 hits, I realised I'd made a mistake by putting the original dates I posted them to LJ on my stories on A03, instead of the date I posted them to A03. I actually went back and remedied that in the case of the revised version of Brief Encounter, which I'd posted with its original date in 2006. It now has the date in June this year when I posted it on A03.

However....



....even though it's now second on my list of stories (arranged by date of posting), it still only has six hits. Which is the reason why I re-dated it in the first place. Weird. I've just re-read it, and it's not that bad, surely?

I can't explain the lack of interest in it as being down to the pairing either, as I have several other Spike/Darla stories posted, one of which is quite popular. I also can't explain the lack of interest away as being because it's an historical story. Yes, those don't seem as popular. Then again, my story with the most hits of all (110, which I know is not much compared to other writers, but it looks like a lot to me) is not only an historical, it features Spike and Darla (and Angelus and Drusilla). What's more it's posted with its original posting date in 2007, so comes right at the end, or right at the back, or whichever, of all the stories I have posted on A03.

Oh well, I suppose those of the opinion that I should never have revised Brief Encounter in the first place will think it serves me right. ;)

In other writing news, I managed to do a bit more revision of the penultimate Spike/Giles season 7 story the other day. I'm now at the bit where I have to start doing some major, major re-writing. :Whimper:

I also have three more chapters of that Spuffy thing I started on sb_fag_ends last month written. But I don't want to post them yet. In fact, I really wish I'd managed to draw what I had to something more like a close on the comm. I don't like WIPs. Do you?

By which I mean, I don't like it when I write them. I'm always afraid I won't be able to finish them. Posting any chapters at all until the whole thing's done makes me uncomfortable.

My own fault, of course.

Yeah, WIPs. What do you think?

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

I think for a WIP it all depends. I'm sure we've all read some WIP that was so well written or enjoyed that we'd still have read it even knowing it never got wrapped up. I think it also depends how far along the WIP is. If something is a good long story, the journey itself could be promising enough that it wouldn't matter.

Interestingly, I remember noticing a big difference between Buffy and SPN fandoms on LJ back when I got into the latter. I was quite accustomed to stories being either shorter or posted as chapters in Buffy fandom. I used to follow a lot of WIPs at one time. In SPN, I was surprised to find that even longer stories got posted all at once (this was before the spate of Big Bangs came along). It's possible I followed some WIPs though at the moment I can't think of any that weren't completed. However there was such a firehose of fic in SPN that I never read anything that wasn't a rec, and few WIPs got recced. So that had a lot to do with it.

Right now I'm finding much the same in Merlin fandom. These days other than some direct recs, I tend to get stories just from browsing its AO3 fandom feed and clicking on anything that's over 5K and fits some general interests. So this is in some ways a pretty random sampling of the fandom. Yet even so I tend to find come across relatively few WIPs. Maybe it's because many of them have chapters under 5K so I'm automatically scrolling past them?

[shapinglight]

It could be. I find it hard to believe that no one in those fandoms ever posts WIPs.