What I can't for the life of my work out is why this is so much worse that avoiding fic that is written by someone whose work you have not enjoyed in the past.
Speaking only for myself, I can say that there are writers who I've given a chance in the past, and usually because of a fundamental problem with their writing (poor grammar/no punctuation/hard to follow because of confusing sentence structure) I will skip a new story written by that writer. I guess it's a flaw but I assume that such a problem is not likely to be fixed and any stories by such a writer will contain more of the same.
Or if I've read a writer's stories and they tend toward a theme that holds no interest for me (the antics of Krypto the superdog), I might tend to skip that writer's latest assuming it is another in that area. Nothing personal towards the writer, of course. Simply a matter of taste (and Wendy knows how I feel about Judith McNaught, yet we happily agree to disagree *vbg*).
Since I only have so much time to read, I admit to going toward a known entity. It's that way in RL as well - when faced with a bookshelf full of books at the bookstore, I naturally gravitate towards writers who I've enjoyed in the past and move away from writers whose books I've found unsatisfactory.
Not that writers don't change and aren't worth giving a second chance. Most certainly, they can and should be. It's just when limited by constraints of time and other commitments, I can excuse people for passing up things I've written if they've been unhappy with what I've done in the past.
It's like if you hate potatoes and you only have so much room on your plate, you might choose to forgo the au grautin potato casserole that you've admittedly never tried and might actually like because you do love cheese. But you only have so much room and you've already eaten a lot of chocolate.
What's cool is that during Kerths, a writer I might have skipped is now someone I will probably read if their stories show up on the short list. By the recommendation of enough people to earn that story a nom, I now have a good reason to take a second look and might be pleasantly surprised. Certainly after that I'd put that writer on the top of my must-read list.
Lynn
