how about this: When did everyone get started in fanfic? Were you more of a writer or a reader, and how much has that changed since then?
I discovered fanfic during the summer of 1999. I'd been a fan since early 1998, but the Millennium era was when I really got obsessed and started looking BSB up on the internet and stuff, and that's when I stumbled onto my first fanfic. I read a ton of it that summer; I couldn't get enough.
I originally couldn't see myself writing it at all, but that changed when I got an idea for a story and gave it a shot, sometime over that winter of 99/00. I started one story that I never finished, but then later rewrote from scratch and posted (Years of Grace), but the first story that I finished (Heartache) I got hosted on a site in I think February of 2000... and by the end of April, I had started my site and was writing a chapter a day and a novel a month LOL. Back then, I read and wrote in equal amounts - a LOT of both!! We still had dial-up internet, and my mom was always on my case about tying up the phone line, so I did a lot of copying and pasting of stories into Word to save and take back to my own computer to read offline.
Nowadays I'm probably more of a writer than a reader. I do still enjoy reading fanfics, but I mostly just follow a select few in-progress fics and read the updates on them when they're posted. I don't find myself seeking them out as often as I used to. If I scroll past a summary on the Most Recent page that catches my eye, I'll check it out, but I don't find myself actively searching for new stories to read. I think about writing a lot, though, and try to do at least a little every day (or every weekend, during the school year).
