It's because it's neither of those that I suggest the wider outlet.

The PVB board has always had a rather restricted readership. Even back at its most populous, the board probably had 35 regular readers and lurkers. That meant that 35 people in the whole world knew enough about the backstory and characters to be able to read the stuff that was posted here and follow it. A few brave souls were able to plunge in late but the longer we went on the harder that got; it's the nature of shared universes that they accrete.

My rule of thumb was that there needed to be at least 12 active participants to sustain a thriving community, 6-8 of whom were producing material fairly regularly. It's several years since we've been at anything like that level here. So realistically there are perhaps half a dozen people still around with the background understanding to follow the cast of our stories, and maybe half of them looking at the board at any given period. That's a very small demographic to cater to.

But what this community had traditionally been very good at is supporting people's writing endeavours, with comment and encouragement and even criticism. It's a fine place to hone one's abilities. That's why I suggest that you use the concepts and situations you've developed here and repackage them for a wider audience, while still benefiting from feedback and support from the folks who know you and your product here.




It is difficult. When possible I try and leave things I've written "fallow" for a while then go back and proofread again. For example, this week I've written 44,000 words of a novel that was commissioned from me last Saturday. That's fast for me and I just know I'll need to go back and do a heavy second draft. But the most important thing is to get a complete story down on paper. Then we go back and make sure its a good complete story.