::sigh::

[farla]

Got a review for Ice today where the reviewer wanted to know about Maelstrom and if I'm ever going to do anything more with that.

Pretty much the only thing that comes to mind is along the lines of 'delete it, purge hard drive, and deny it ever existed.'

Meanwhile, I'm reminded that I really need to get on with reposting Pokemon Revolution. I'm procrastinating because I'm not really sure how to do it - it'll need editing to be readable anyway, as FFN strips out several symbols I used in it, so should I rewrite my chapters or just post them as-is? Rewriting that story's an absolute nightmare. I made a stab at it a year or two ago - I think I made it up past Ch10, but I was introducing new problems as I did so. And there are all sorts of underlying problems I can't fix with a surface rewrite anyway. Then there's the question of if I should post the chapters individually or all at once, and...

And there are all the other stories I really don't like, yet other people seem to. I can never decide if I should take them down or not.

Comments

[jaxmalcolm.livejournal.com]

...Why would he (assuming it's a he) review one of your stories asking about another, rather than just going over to that other story and leaving a note there? ._.

On the other hand, I suppose you are talking about FFNet here...

Anyway, what sort of problems did you wind up hitting when rewriting Pokemon Revolution? Personally, I'd say just rewrite it to make it readable, but I don't want to be too cruel.

As for your other concern, I'd say post them slowly. Personal experience has told me that apparently putting up two or more chapters at once automatically marks the fic as not being worth readers' time (in a nice, tl;dr fashion), but that might just be my luck.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Oh, he was talking about both stories, so it might just have been he thought of it while reading Ice. Although yes, it'd be nice if reviews could go with the story they focus most on.

Well, there's an underlying structure to each chapter, so while I can reword things, I can't really mess with the actual events, especially since half the chapters aren't even mine so I can't alter anything that'd affect them. And it doesn't help matters that just trying to read the original chapters is almost impossible for me. I just spend the whole time cringing and thinking 'Oh god, people read this with my name on it' and 'oh god, I wrote this'.

Yeah, but my desire to whore for reviews and attention is matched by my desire for no one to notice the story as I'm uploading it. It's a weird feeling.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'd probably leave the stories up just out of laziness no matter how bad I considered them to be.

As for rewriting stuff, I've concluded that I'm terrible at it and can't really give advice there. I suppose the thing to consider would be whether you'd prefer to post the same story but have it be on the surface prettier, or writing a different story based on the same central ideas. Obviously, the second option would almost be like committing to writing a totally new fanfic, so it all depends on how much effort you want to put into it and how much you really care.

Not in the slightest helpful, but it's the best I've got.

[farla.livejournal.com]

...I don't know. If I post it as-is, I can just disclaim it as 'something I wrote years ago', so that all the mistakes can go under the same umbrella. If I rewrite the surface, the story itself will be better, but I'll have to take responsibility for the messes I can't fix - and I'm still not sure if, when I do that, I should just reword the chapters in better language or actually rewrite the scenes to try to fix them up, which will then lead to problems in making early chapters fit into the whole thing.

^^ And as this is co-written, a complete rewrite is pretty much out of the question.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, I'd forgotten that it was a joint project. That does make things more difficult.

Eh, I suppose a disclaimer could work. I probably wouldn't do it myself as I would feel like a bad hypocrite for scorning people who say "Please excuse the errors because I wrote this when I was X years old..."

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, the magic of rationalization tells me that posting something for the first time without editing, and reposting something without editing, are completely different. Give me a while and I'll probably even be able to dredge up a good reason for it.

Meh. I'm going to resolve this with an equivalent coin toss.