To post WIPs or not?

[doranwen]

My policy has always been (well, other than the first handful of fics I posted back when I was like a teenager on ff.n, lol) not to post WIPs, for a couple reasons:

- I might have to make edits to early parts of the fic later per recommendations from a beta, or because the plot didn't work or something like that. If it's not posted before I finish it, no one will know how it was, only the finished product.

- I don't want to get anyone's hopes up for completed fic when chances are very good that if I quit writing a fic, I will never pick it back up again. (The only thing I've found that can change that is a good alpha reader willing to live chat with me about it.)

- For any longer fic, I wouldn't necessarily know where to put the chapter breaks until I saw the whole fic as a whole.


However, I've wondered whether I should rethink that policy, with the following supporting posting my WIPs (even if just to a collection that I create, like "Doranwen's WIPs" or something like that):

- People will at least be able to read what I have; as long as they know not to expect more, that's better than nothing for some. I read WIPs all the time, for instance. Some of my favorite fics are permanent WIPs. I wish they were finished but am infinitely glad I got to at least read what there was.

- I would get comments/kudos on them, when otherwise no one might ever read them. And most of us fanfic writers live for comments. :D

- I might be able to find alpha readers for some fandoms where I don't have them currently, by posting and making it clear that the fic is on hiatus unless/until I find one, because I don't know where to go with it beyond that. People would see the fic and be aware that I'm looking for an alpha reader, whereas right now most people who might be able to help don't have a clue.


What are your thoughts on posting WIPs? Would you suggest I do so or not, and why?


EDIT: I ultimately decided to post the ones I was not actively working on and had no plans to do so anytime because of a lack of an alpha reader. Those are unlikely to ever be continued at this rate, and several are over 10k, so I'd hate all the writing I did so far to never be seen by anyone. To make sure I didn't disappoint anyone expecting completion, I added them all to a series I called Doranwen's Semi-Abandoned WIPs and added sufficient tags to each one to make it very clear that they were likely perma-WIPs and were posted just so that those who didn't mind reading perma-WIPs could read them. They've had a couple hits and that's it so far, but it feels better getting all of those words uploaded. There's still at least 12k words I couldn't post, either because I'm about to pick the fic back up with an alpha reader, or because what I have of the fic is the *middle*, not the beginning, etc., but the majority of the words are up there now. (And they're more than 1/5 of everything I've ever written!)

Comments

[duskpeterson]

As a reader, I'm fine with WIPs, though it helps if the writer has a track record of finishing stories. If months have passed since the last update, I take that as a bad sign.

As a writer, I don't post story WIPs, for reason #1 you gave. (At least, not at AO3; I've occasionally posted abandoned WIPs elsewhere, but I label them as abandoned.) I do post series WIPs, because it takes me years to complete series.

[doranwen]

Yeah, if I *did* post them, I would warn that there is a very high probability that they won't be finished, since the only thing I've found that can change that is someone coming along to be an alpha reader, lol. If I knew what to write next, I would already have done it; I never have fics as WIPs just because I haven't gotten around to writing the next part. They're always WIPs because I'm stalled (don't know where I'm going or what should come next), stuck on a bit of characterization or a detail I can't seem to research properly, etc. But I'm always getting into fandoms where the fic's not been updated for like five years so I know going into it that I'll probably never see it updated beyond what there is, but it's usually still worth reading what there is. And a couple of the WIPs I do have are the sort that if I did post them, I'd probably have some pretty excited readers for them, knowing the fandom.

I've sort of wished there were a site for WIPs only, particularly abandoned ones, lol. Like you could just post it there and everyone would know not to expect anything further, or that there was a system for adopting orphan fics or something. But I don't think any of mine are necessarily *permanently* abandoned at this point - I have varying levels of interest in finishing them, depending on the fandom/fic, but there's not one of them that I couldn't see myself, under the right conditions, picking back up and finishing it with the needed help.

Rookie Blue

[(Anonymous)]

Hello I saw that you have some Rookie blue fics, and that you created a site ... I want to tell you that the fanfom is not dead, we have some groups on Facebook where we try to revive the fandom and there are many people who are watching Rookie blue at the moment and what is reading fanfics, if you have any fanfic of rookie blue (sam / andy) can you let me know? or you can leave me the link of your site where you have the fanfics.

my email: karenmorabbass@gmail.com

Thank you!

Re: Rookie Blue

[doranwen]

Ah! They should get Dreamwidth accounts and join rookieblue. :D

I don't have a Facebook account - and refuse to get one; I don't trust that company and I don't like the requirement of real name only. I've always kept my real name separate from my online nick if I could. So that's why I don't do anything on there. But I'd definitely invite fandom people to come over here, because this is a very good site for fandom - much more trustworthy than FB - and it's a lot easier to work with it in general.

All the fics I have I post to AO3 - you can find all my Rookie Blue ones here, including the ones that are waiting for help because I don't know what to write next. I've got one more that's hopefully going to have my alpha reader return to help with, but so far I haven't heard from them.

Rookie Blue Fandom

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, okay, I want to move the group to Telegram and send the links to the fics there, but some people still don't agree with that. I will take the link of your fics and publish them in the group, and if there is someone interested in helping with your fics, I will tell them to contact you, if you agree. I want to ask you also about RB's fic (AU beginnings fic) Is that finished or do you need help to finish it? because some people have told me about it but I don't know what to tell them, if it is finished or not. And I also saw in your profile on this site, that you are in the X-Men Fandom ... Do you have X-Men FanFics saved? I saw that you have a link to some Jjblazer Fic but your page is not active now and I would like to read them, if you could let me know that I would appreciate it very much.

Re: Rookie Blue FFics

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, I shared the links on the group si the people can join and read the fics and support you ...

There is a fic from RB (Rookie Blue - AU beginnings fic teaser) I found this interesting, is it complete? or do you still need help with this one? Because I really would like to read it and see where it leads, it was the first link I got and it brought me to your page.

I also saw that you have X-Men FFics, (I'm also in that fandom) and I wanted to know if you have any saved FanFictions, why are we trying to save old X-Men fics from authors that are no longer online, and what their pages were removed. I would like to know if you have files from jjblazer saved or from some other author that is no longer active. I would really appreciate if you could give me that information.

Thank you!

Re: Rookie Blue Fandom

[doranwen]

I've got someone who volunteered to help with the AU beginnings fic but I haven't gotten a reply from them in the past week, so we'll see if they're still around. People are interested but then don't follow through a lot.

I have saved some X-Men Fanfics, yes - most of jjblazer's I have saved, though I think you can probably get to them via the Wayback Machine in most cases. Just browse the whole site from the Wayback Machine and you can find jjblazer's author's page.

Re: Rookie Blue Fandom and X-Men Fic

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks, I had a few months trying to get as much X-Men FanFiction to save, and I was missing a lot of jjblazer ... we are saving and sharing them on LiveJournal for new readers to have access to.

I really appreciate this.

Re: Rookie Blue Fandom and X-Men Fic

[doranwen]

No problem! I save all the fics I read and like, generally (and regret it when I don't), so that usually provides me the links I need to find stuff on the Wayback Machine for others - or, in some cases, just upload them to a Mega folder I use to keep backups of fics that no longer exist in the wild.

Where there are heaps and heaps of fic probably nowhere else is in the Yahoo Groups data we saved this past year - but I haven't even had a chance to look at them yet. Still processing the metadata so we can build a database to get volunteers to identify fandoms and whatnot for all of it.

Re: Rookie Blue Fandom and X-Men Fic

[(Anonymous)]

Excellent, I am storing all the fics that I find and I keep them in a drive so as not to lose them. I have the files from the old Yahoo! Groups and have gone through some, but haven't had time to see all of them. There are some that are not complete, I think they never finished them, or they were simply lost among so many messages in the groups. I hope I can store as much of the X-Men and Rookie Blue as I can and I'm constantly searching.