Spell-check is wonderful for catching typos, such as "adn" for "and" or "teh" for "the," which are all too common for me. It's things such as "and" when I meant to type "an" that a beta-reader comes in handy.

In one of my anime fandoms, there's a writer who is notorious for flipping out whenever she gets anything resembling negative criticism. Even worse, she farms out her stories to a variety of editors, then posts them with none of the corrections made. She now only posts her stories to her private mailing list, and has furthermore taken all of her stories off of ff.net. She's been trying to get them taken out of another archive, but she'd made the mistake of flaming the archivist who is leaving the stories up out of spite. Good times, good times...

(BTW, this is the writer whose "challenge" message prompted the creation of the unhappyendings list.)

Ah! That writer. Snerk.

OTOH, I've rarely had that response to anything I say, because I've gotten pretty good at spotting the "written in chem lab" stories from the first three lines.

FWIW, my series that popped up at Te's recs blog was written in the WC in a notepad.

I wrote the first part of "Career Change" plus a lot of smut in my D&D game. Yes, I eventually dropped that game, since it wasn't much of a diversion.

my series that popped up at Te's recs blog was written in the WC in a notepad.

Ah, but I expect you also edited it and revised it and treated it as something worthy of your time.

And yes, I'm snarking a bit. For every sixteen crappy "written in chem lab" stories, there's one tossed-off piece of fluff that's lovely. However those lovely ones tend to come from the hand of writers who take writing seriously, and their skill and talent show through even on sudden!fic.

Maayan's newest story would be a case in point. No one questions her commitment to her writing, and that skill, developed over years of practice, is apparent in 16K of something that she wrote very very quickly and revised only a little.

Ah, but I expect you also edited it and revised it and treated it as something worthy of your time.

I typed and spell-checked?

When I sent them out for real, I did a read-through first. Found a couple typos I missed when they were up for Slash Advent.

Pieces for me are either sudden can't-type-fast-enough bits or long, painful, horrible labours of love. (Triptych was the former, Absolution the latter.)

Hmm. I guess the difference is that when I'm writing quickly, it's not to distract myself from something like chem class, it's because there are words attacking me from all sides.

I think I like the "wake up in the middle of the night, where's the pen?" stories better than the ones I have to wander around the house muttering about. I can remember the zing of inspiration and how easy the story flowed as opposed to the hours of plot manipulation. Then again, writing an AU that's not too over-the-top is surprisingly tricky. I know what I WANT Xander and Spike to be doing, but laying the groundwork so it doesn't look stupid when/if it finally happens (uncooperative twits) is tricky--but fun.

Ooooooh! Hey, I've just had a thought!

I've been in the barren wilderness of mostly-ficless-busy-reality this past month, but unless matters have changed drastically, AJ Hall should be bringing out a new Draco/Neville piece on Valentine's Day! I think it's supposed to be the how-they-got-together story!

Please, deities, let nothing interfere with this?

Yes!!! WOOHOO!!

I was talking to an HP fan today who confessed to reading slash, so I steered her LOP-wards quick as a bunny. Where do I go to claim my toaster?

I have several spare ones, Holli - would you like to take your pick?