On Sat, 15 Feb 1997, Geoffrey Ty wrote:

I'm considering several things when reading fanfics. Mostly its just
simply the efort someone put into it, you can always tell when someone
decided to just throw together a few ideas without really thinking about
it or putting forth any kind of real effort.

I just ran across one of those, but I'd rather not name names.  I'm
cleaning out my inbox this morning, and trying to decide what's worth
keeping and what isn't.  I have a nine meg account that's currently 96%
full, a 2400 baud modem, and a 20 meg hard drive on my 8086.  Something
has to give.

I consider what makes me write fanfic. I've always been a big 'what if?'
person, as I'm sure most of you are too. But what ismpires you to write
fanfics? About any series? Any genre`? For the sole purpose of
entertaining others?

A few different reasons, actually.  I enjoy writing, but I know I need a
lot of practice with my characterization and scenery.  It's always been
my weak point, whereas I've always excelled at dialogue.  I also tend to
get ideas from here, on the mailing list, and a few other places.  I
recently read a couple of books by Charles Sheffield, and one of the
characters impressed me a lot.  I put that together with a line from
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I have a story idea.  I'm too busy
with MI:  Channel Surfing and BGC/WHO:  Slipt right now to pursue it,
but I'm writing down ideas and dialogue for it in my writing notebook as
they come to me.

As for entertaining others?  Well, I kind of enjoyed writing Springtime
for Brain in Megatokyo, but I wanted to see if I could "continue"
Bubblegum Warners, (nope, it's not mine, check the remailer, I think)
and also see what kind of reaction I'd get from the list.  Well, the
people who wrote back said they loved it.  That was nice.  
Unfortunately, there were only two of them.  I'll get used to that,
sooner or later.  :P  At least my other two current fanfics are
generating some C&C.  8)

Damon Casale, scyth@andrew.cmu.edu
Spam, spam!  WONDERFUL spam!  ^_^