Finally migrating works to AO3

[dbskyler]

I had one of the best experiences a fanfic writer can have the other day: someone read one of my fics on AO3, liked it, commented on it, then promptly went off to read a bunch of my other fics on AO3 and comment on them as well. Obviously that only happens when the reader and I have tastes in common, and indeed, in one of their comments they happened to mention that the Doctor/Sarah best-friends relationship is their favorite. Oh, I was grinning so much, because -- me too! So then of course I became especially interested to know what they thought of my other Doctor/Sarah fic as I have written a truly embarrassing amount of it. I looked through my other fic on AO3 and . . . oh. Most of that fic isn't on AO3, I realized. I wrote it before I got an account there, and never bothered to bring it over from Teaspoon.

So, I am starting to rectify that. In some ways it's fun because the work shows up on AO3 as "new" and gets a little attention that way and hey, new comments on fic I wrote years ago! It's the cheapest, easiest way to get a small little ego boost. But it's also a bit of a pain because, as handy as AO3's import function is, I still have to go through about three iterations of correcting the notes and the tags and other random things once it's been imported. In fact, I'm wondering if it's not easier to simply post it as a new work from the copy of the fic on my computer. Of course, that means putting in all the tags and notes from scratch, but I'm practically doing that anyway.

Those of you who've done this for all of your past work -- any thoughts? Which method is easier?

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I think with a lot of the Teaspoon things, I was doing it from the original word docs anyway, as I wanted to make some tweaks while I was at it, so I don't know to say. I suspect it's six of one and half a dozen of the other!

It'll be nice to have more of your stuff in both places, though. :-)

[dbskyler]

Honestly, I'm starting to wonder how much readership there still is at Teaspoon, which is a very sad thought because that site was my introduction to online Doctor Who fandom. I doubt I would've found LJ if I hadn't found Teaspoon first. But even if Teaspoon were still going strong, it would make sense to put that fic at AO3 too. That way, I can do one of those AO3 stats memes, and it will actually apply to all of my fic!

[thisbluespirit]

My first introduction was alt.drwho.creative and rec.arts.drwho! But I doubt I'd have found LJ without Teaspoon, either. I have very fond memories, but it doesn't seem to get quite the same readership any more, it's true.

That way, I can do one of those AO3 stats memes, and it will actually apply to all of my fic!

LOL, always the important thing!!

[john_amend_all]

Particularly with multichapter works I think it's easiest to start from the original document; I imported a few works from Teaspoon but they needed a lot of tweaking.

[dbskyler]

Yeah, I tried importing one multichapter fic and quickly realized that it wasn't going to work. Then I had a panic attack because it was an old fic and I didn't put the html codes in my Word documents back then, and I thought I might have to go back and hand-code in all the italics, etc. But AO3's rich text option for posting worked beautifully.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i found exactly the same thing - the import feature isn't actually easier than just posting from scratch, as you have to go back into various fiddly views to change stuff from the import.

hooray that people are discovering your old fics though :)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Having done it both ways now, I have come to the conclusion that posting from scratch is the way to go. It doesn't take less time, but it's a lot less frustrating -- you don't go through all those cycles of "wait, what happened to the 'X' tag? And why are my notes messed up? Didn't I fix that? What's going on?" You just know from the start that you have to put everything in, and so you do.

It's funny, though, because I've found that it's still easier to go look at the fic on Teaspoon to remind myself how I tagged it. I never know how to tag things, and just copying how I did it last time helps, even though AO3 has more tagging options I could potentially use.