After submitting my fic for spn_summergen and having an "oh shit, shoulda added a line about ______," I've been wondering about the whole unfixed nature of fanfic on the web.
When I submit fic for something like Yuletide, where there's a hard and fast deadline, I'm often working right up to that deadline with barely even time for a spelling and grammar beta. I have no trouble with doing minor fixes after the fact on those fics before posting them to my own or other archives. In this case, though, I think the story could stand a thorough overhaul, with perhaps some sections fleshed out and so on.
Part of me thinks that (other than minor cosmetic tweaking), I should leave things close to as-is. Part of me thinks the story could be a much stronger one for a thorough re-working.
I'm still debating (it's not like there's any rush), but I'm curious to know what other people think. Is overhauling an already posted fic "cheating," or do you consider it one of the perks of posting online?
If I did a serious overhaul, I'd post it as a director's cut or something, rather than just updating what's up there. I mean, spelling errors I'll fix. But whole section re-writes? Nope.
I'm sort-of that way too. Once it's posted, it's "published" in my mind. Changing that changes the story that I put out there.
I'd feel like I'd have to put up some sort of notice if I did a full overhaul of a story that's posted. I'm ok with fixing a typo I spot on rereading, but I'm lucky enough to have copies in various places, and those copies wouldn't get fixed, so I pretty much leave stuff alonel.
At this point, I'm thinking that Plei's "director's cut" label might suit my purposes quite well.
In this case I was fortunate to have two very, very able betas look over it and catch some potentially serious errors before I sent it out, but with this fic I really wish I had timed things so I could have had another week to flesh out some ideas/characters.
SGA Big Bang is Out!
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Humungous big stories to read! Yay!
Best Ellen story ever:
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24,000 words, basically gen, and brilliant.
I knew which one that was without looking! LOVE IT.
Isn't it amazing? No other Ellen stories need be written.
