One of the things that really frustrates me at the Pit is that it won't let me use visual dividers (header bars, if that's the right name for them) in my stories. And my stories tend to need those. And I find LJ soooo much easier to edit. And the Pit constantly tells me I haven't agreed to their guidelines and makes me click through that thing every. time. I. post. Oh, and for several months its search engine insisted that I did not exist. But I do post there as often as my patience will allow, because it does reach a wider audience. And yes, much of the stuff that's posted there is really poor quality, but I hope to help set a slightly better example for the young'uns. Although I'm not sure how many of 'em read my stuff, seeing as there's no romance involved. Heh.

There's an option for header bars or horizontal dividers for posting in Ff.net -- I can't remember what they're called but I've definitely used them. I'm afraid I got out of the habit of posting there when they were having that one huge breakdown where you had to hold your mouth just right and spit sideways into the wind in order to upload your fic. I do think it's a great resource and a terrific place for folks to get their feet wet, as it were -- it's the grand-daddy of 'Net fanfic.

Thanks for the tips guys As a Mac and DEll user, I have not had any problem posting from Mac to FF or LJ, but then it could be because I cheated and got Windows for Mac so I could write at work and post later at home :)

I'm being surrounded by Macavites! Arghh! FF does have its ups and downs. But that thing - you can go into your stories page and 'export' a document, edit it, then replace it with an existing chapter or story. I find this handy if you see a typo or some such in a chapter or something. And although it tends to hate ...s FF does have this line thing now where you can stick in a whole line for a break. I'll generally post on POV, then link to it around LJ. I know there's some ettiquette about linking back to your own LJ, but all that cutting and editing in the teeny tiny boxes drives me nuts. I'm not gonna edit a story in a box the size of an orange - get knotted!

I'm in such a thinkie mood today. Troops just recced Not With a Bang But With a Whimper in the desert Island thread (much ta there Troops). Now that is probably the story I am most proud of because it is the most realistic. I've done Au stories, horror stories, pseudo real life stories, stories where I've just gone ahead and turned House into a naughty schoolboy because gosh dang it - I felt like it. I have never considered myself really a writer writer, but I have been learning that ff does give you the chance to play around with different genres and styles. And a lot of us also write (or work in associated businesses) for a living. What makes people who write all day every day write for fun? And is this strange medium of ff valid. My literary friend said the other day that I was dissing myself because I was in fact writing writing - something about being a poet and not even knowing it. So I suppose the question I want to ask is - how do people feel about ff in terms of literature. Where does it stand. And no I'm not doing a study or writing an article on it - it just fascinates me.

I've already decided that if I ever get around to compiling my own List of Eight, Not With A Bang will be on it. It is realistic and it's totally, completely heartbreaking. While The Contract has been the story that launched a thousand fics, I don't think it's because the quality of the writing was any different than that of the other story; it simply left so much unexplored and so much damage done that other people couldn't resist stepping in to fill in some of the blanks. Not With A Bang is ... perhaps more complete on its own, even though we really don't know what happens at the 'end.' Fanfic in terms of literature? I don't know. How arbitrary are our definitions to begin with? Which fanfic is in question? If someone hundreds of years ago invented a character such as, say, King Arthur, and then fifty other writers of that era penned stories about that character, we would now look at most of those stories as literature. Whereas fanfiction tends to get seen as mindless fluff, or at least as being ephemeral and inconsequential, somehow 'not real.' Perhaps the difference is due to snobbishness about our own era, or about fandom, or television/movies/etc. as legitimate forms of art. Perhaps it helped that in the middle ages there weren't hordes of 14 year old girls writing Arthur/Lancelot slash or Guinevere-angsts-and-cuts-herself stories. I don't know, but it's an interesting question. I've read fanfic that touched me far more deeply than some of the "classics" I had to read in high school and college.

I find that a tricky question too simply because I have friends who wrote fan fic and are now published authors. Does it make it any less impacting if you are weeping over Doctor Who or Doctor Zhivago (did I get that spelling vagely right?).

Hmmm... is fanfic literature? One simple definition of literature is "creative writing of recognized artistic value." Maybe that's the bottom line. Is it well written? Evocative? Does it make you think, laugh, cry, or question? Is the writer actually trying to accomplish something besides taking the characters for a fun romp? (And what's wrong with the occasional well-written fun romp, anyway?) In fanfic, a lot of the work is done for the writer. Everyone knows the characters, their personalities and backstories, the setting, the present emotional relationships. Almost all of the "creating" has been done by the show's writers already. When I told a friend of mine (we both write for our own amusement) I was writing House fanfic, he said, "If I put something out there for others to read, it'll be MY story and MY characters!" That, I think, sums up the attitude about fanfic. I find the challenge to be in taking these established characters with their defined lives, and digging deeper (as the show slowly does) to find out more about them. I like to take them out of their comfort zones. Wilson roaming the halls of PPTH? It's easy to imagine his interactions. Wilson on vacation in the wilds of, say, the Amazon? He might fall apart. Or he might have a rugged side to him ... only the fanfic writer can say!

I think FF is a different form of art than literature, because the medium it lives in allows it much more freedom. Anyone can post anything, there's no professional mitigators, it's a much more raw writers-readers connection, resulting in a more raw audience feedback. Plus, that freedom allows the writer to do pretty much whatever she or he wants with the characters, which are indeed mostly unoriginal, but being handled and evolve very differently in the hands of each writer.

There's a lot of fanfic that's crap, but read pwcorgigirl's stuff -- pretty much any of it -- and tell me that's her word choice isn't poetic in nature. Oh, and another last minute hate on ff.net -- the fact that it doesn't allow punctuation marks, or only a few, in its summaries and episode titles. My current fic, "The Past Is the Present (It's the Future Too)" intentionally has parentheses -- I stole it from "Long Day's Journey Into Night" because of the circular guilt and crimes, of mistakes returning again and again, etc. But on ff.net, I can't use parentheses. So it just has half a title. Or those people who write slash, and yet on ff.net can't even use a slash.

I'm way late to the game (I've been lurking for a bit and just registered now), but I wanted to agree whole-heartedly with this: I think sometimes it might be just as hard and scary for a reader to write a review as it is for the writer to write a story... Writing on the Internet is a bit like public speaking. It's a scary thing. I'm much more of a reader than I am a writer. I'm a voracious reader, going through the House fanfic sites and various rec lists every day unless I'm out-of-town. Meanwhile, I've only posted a couple short stories, so I definitely don't consider myself "a writer." So when I read something I really enjoyed, I feel very intimidated when it comes time to put together a coherent thought for a comment. It's especially bad if it's story by someone whose work I absolutely adore. That's when I feel the most tongue-tied. Sometimes I find the story soon after it's posted, and few if any people have responded yet, and I tell myself I'll comment later so my note can sort of slip quietly into the clump of responses and not stand out as the first thing someone reads in the comment section. Then I'll either forget to come back, or by the time I DO come back, everyone has already said what I would want to say, and I feel like an idiot repeating, "I loved that one line about House and the trolley!" (or whatever) for the hundredth time. I feel like I need to be insightful and original in my comment, because "I love it; it seemed really in-character" feels just too generic and like I didn't care enough when I wrote my comment. And that's not the case. It's just that I feel nervous about posting deeper, more insightful responses. ("What if I'm way off in my analysis of what happened in that story? Or what if my comment about how Wilson relates to House and how that came through in this just sounds completely stupid?") It's wrong of me to skip commenting, especially when I read so much, because I know at least a generic or repetitive comment is better than NO comment, but I gotta tell you: commenting intimidates me a great deal!

Hi, Hithah! You don't write much but you do post vids (HILARIOUS ones). When you do that, do you mind hearing, "That was awesomely funny!" ten times in a row? I like any comment at all, and I love every single comment that analyzes my fics, whether I agree with it or not. On Pillory, one reader was very disturbed by how Wilson was treated and wrote me with a very interesting idea for an alternate ending (vampires were involved). The reader had misinterpreted part of the Pillory universe, but it didn't matter, because he/she was thinking about it, which was just incredibly flattering. Oh, except if you slam a fic anonymously. Then I'll get pissed. If you hate what I wrote, if I've been stupid and misguided and ridiculous, I want to talk to you about it so I can understand and with any luck improve in the future. :)

Hey there, Dee! Awww, thank you so much for the compliment. I'm so glad you've enjoyed them. No, I wouldn't mind hearing those sorts of comments multiple times in the least. But then, my videos are just fluffy and silly and certainly not anything intellectual. I don't expect any "deep" comments on my videos, because really, how would one even WRITE a deep comment about such a video? I guess I assume the quality of comments goes: No comment < general "that was great" comment < more thoughtful, intellectual comment And I know that at the very least I should post that I really enjoyed something, but I feel bad being so general on something that moved me (because it has the appearance of not caring much about the work, which is so far from the truth), and I tend to default to no comment, which is the worst possible action. I'm certainly not looking to excuse my lack of comments. I'm just agreeing that commenting is scary sometimes, like Sheep said.

I think I have read everything in this thread, but I could be mistaken. If this has already been addressed, feel free to ready the wet noodles for flogging. I simply must ask this burning question: should Vicodin be capitalized? I thought since it is a brand name like Kraft macaroni and cheese or Kleenex it should be, but many of the times I encounter it in fanfiction it isn't. Of course, I have also seen it spelled Vicadon and Vicaden and....