Help!

[sophinisba]

Last week I reread a fic of mine that I'd posted a few months ago. I still like the story a lot, but I was distressed to find several typos and one real misspelling. I thought about putting up a post begging readers to inform me any time they noticed an error in one of my fics. But then I thought, Why should they bother to do such a nice thing for me? And, How do they know that I'm serious about wanting to know?

So, I'm going to try out a new policy/challenge: Anyone who e-mails me pointing out two or more mistakes in one of my fics gets a free drabble on a fictional character or pairing of her or his choice. (My address is sophinisba at gmail.com; a comment on LJ works too.) This is extending to all fics old and new, wherever they're posted (unless it's somewhere where I can't fix them), until I take it back. If you write to me about just one mistake I'll still be grateful but I might not give you a drabble. And this applies to clear-cut technical mistakes like spelling, missing quotation marks, etc., although I'm also interested to know if you disagree with me on more substantive stuff like canon and characterization.

And if I apply this retroactively, I owe a drabble to mews1945 for helping me out with one of my first Faculty ficlets. Julia, anything in particular you'd like?

Comments

[slightlytookish]

I've wondered about this. There are times when I've immediately fired off an email or comment about a typo I've discovered, and at other times I've been more hesitant. I wouldn't want to embarrass someone. So thanks for clearing this one up, and if I ever notice anything I'll let you know, drabble offer or not :)

[sophinisba]

I used to do it more around the time I was coming out in LJ. I didn't think I'd write much fic of my own at the time and I wanted to be useful somehow. Some people (like Mariole) were really receptive to that but then I had a few somewhat awkward situations, so I don't do it as much now. Thank you!

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

I recognize the 'awkward situations' - had a few myself for similar reasons. And I too basically gave up on pointing things out.

[sophinisba]

Yeah, at this point I mostly only do it with people I know pretty well, and where I've seen them react to other people's corrections and I know they really will appreciate it.