Prolific Artists and Authors
I think the saddest part about being prolific, whether in writing or art, is that it gives people the opportunity to pick and choose what they like about your work. There's no need to bother with taking the good with the bad. You don't like Gai/Kankuro? Okay, well, she's got some Lee/Gai and some Gaara/Kankuro. Not into incest? Well, there's some Billy/Joel and some Benji/Paul in there, too. You can really gloss over an author or writer's best work without the slightest remorse because there's so much there. I see this on Deviantart and the Pit, as well as some of the bigger archives, and I always feel bad about it. Right now, I'm going through WhiteDog2's gallery and there's just so much that I bounce around, glancing at the pairings I don't know and only following the story arcs I think might be interesting, which, granted, is a lot (I'm on page 25 and it's coming up on the third day I've been perusing her gallery) but still it's not fair to her. All that work and it gets ignored simply because she has more.
It helps put things into perspective, for me at least. If I pick and choose among others way more prolific than me without an ounce of remorse (at least while doing it), it's very likely there are whole mounds of fic I've written that my readers have never even glanced at. Some of my best work could very well be sitting and gathering dust in an archive somewhere because it's a rare pairing and not because the fic necessarily sucks, though I have my fair share of those. (Can It Really Be? needs to die in a fire)
I dunno, it's just a thought.
It helps put things into perspective, for me at least. If I pick and choose among others way more prolific than me without an ounce of remorse (at least while doing it), it's very likely there are whole mounds of fic I've written that my readers have never even glanced at. Some of my best work could very well be sitting and gathering dust in an archive somewhere because it's a rare pairing and not because the fic necessarily sucks, though I have my fair share of those. (Can It Really Be? needs to die in a fire)
I dunno, it's just a thought.