bisexualpirateheart:

Ahh, thank you! Sometimes I’m so much in my own head, it’s hard to tell whether there’s any improvement at all with things. It’s mostly sometime later when I reread something and think, ‘This is actually satisfyng to read’ or ‘this is turned out better than I expected.’ 

Writing a lot does definitely help. The more you write, the more chances you have to look at things, decide what’s working and what’s not, to make mistakes and to figure out how to write what *you* really want to write. 

I admit I don’t consciously work on improving things. Mostly, I look at writing things I don’t usually write (pairings that i don’t usually write, or scenarios or descriptions, instead of dialogue, I like dialogue) and if those turn out well, I feel I’m getting somewhere. It’s easy in a lot of ways to write your favorite pairings (SOMETIMES, not all the times, there are pairings I absolutely adore and I’ve still not written much for at all) and things, but it helps to stretch yourself and write other things as well. 

Mostly though, you should write what you really really want to write. 🙂 

Agree enthusiastically, but …

What if “what you really want to write” works for you, but not for readers? You write a story that you think holds together, and feel pleased and maybe even a little proud, and other fans ignore it because it’s based more on an OC than an OTP? Or, you write a story with parts that seem ok to you, but do not persuade your trusted beta readers?  (What I personally tend to do is: in the first case, leave the story on AO3 and keep liking it and its OC; in the second case, do some soul-searching and aim at a compromise solution)