(no subject)
Writers, you may well feel unappreciated in fandoms, but consider this: You are nobody's performing monkey. People understand that you do your work privately in your own time, and perfect it with careful revision. Imagine if everyone who came up to your table at a convention, instead of buying your finished books, flipped through them to judge your talent and said, "So are you doing stories? I'd like a short story about my character, whom I will describe to you, and the plot is that he fights a cyborg army and falls in love with Galadriel. I normally wouldn't really think of commissioning such a thing, but what's valuable to me is the opportunity to make you write it right now while I stand here and watch you write it. Are you close to done? *sigh* I guess I can come back in twenty minutes."