Hmmm…. maybe that should be done again. But maybe somebody ought to do that and not tell anybody. (Has that ever been done?)
Yes - it's no secret to those who've been around a while that I've done it a couple of times. Once was a genuine experiment; I was getting good feedback as myself, and I wanted to see for myself whether a complete newbie would get feedback. So I posted a story under the nick Jane Doe. It got great feedback. I confessed my identity once it was all posted - I think I'd managed to fool just about everyone.
Did it again in nfic, posting some pure smut vignettes as Cat Grant - mainly, then, because even though I wrote them they weren't my favourite sort of writing. Maybe I was just a little bit embarrassed about them - I don't know. I think I did 'come out' about that being me eventually.
And there is one nfic, originally posted on Zoomway's message boards and still hosted on Annesplace, under a pseudonym, that I wrote and, to the best of my knowledge, hardly anyone knows is mine. That - to my amazement, given its subject-matter - got excellent feedback.
I think in general this fandom is pretty welcoming to newbies... And, let's face it, LynnM's, Dave's and CC Aiken's popularity attests to that. The three of them are very, very recent additions to FoLC fanfic-writing. You've just been unlucky enough, as LabRat's said and Kathy's shown, to join at a time when so many of the long-standing writers have moved on to other things.
Wendy
