Five Things Nary Said
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Five Things Nary Said |
| Interviewer: | Claudia Rebaza |
| Interviewee: | Nary |
| Date(s): | June 2, 2016 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | |
| External Links: | Five Things Nary Said |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Five Things Nary Said is a 2016 Q&A guest post, conducted by the Organization for Transformative Works' Communications Committee with OTW volunteer and Support Committee staff member Nary.
It was carried out as part of a series. See Five Things Said.
Excerpts
What fannish things do you like to do?
I write fanfic, although I find that these days, when there are so many other demands on my time, I do best when I’m writing for an exchange — having a deadline helps to motivate me, as does knowing that someone is counting on me to finish my story. So I participate in a handful of exchanges every year — Yuletide and Jukebox for sure, and then a few others as time permits or interest strikes me. In 2016 so far I’ve participated in the Chocolate Box exchange and Smut Swap, for instance, and I’m planning to sign up for the Seeing Color exchange as well. I write in a wide variety of mostly-small fandoms, so multifandom exchanges are my favourite kind.
I’m also trying my hand at running an exchange on AO3 for the first time, called Three Worlds Travelers, for the Books of the Raksura series by Martha Wells. It’s fairly small, but I’m very excited about it, because in any small fandom, new fic is always a cause for celebration! I had some experience running exchanges in the Song of Ice and Fire fandom years ago, but those were all run through LiveJournal, so it’s been interesting to see first-hand all the features that AO3 offers to make the task simpler than it used to be. I’m sure it will make me more comfortable with answering the questions that we receive about collections and exchanges, too!
What’s the most fun thing to you about volunteering?
By volunteering for Support, I’ve definitely learned things about how to use the Archive that I wasn’t aware of before, even though I’d been a user of the site since 2009. For instance, I’ve become a lot more familiar with the searching and filtering options that are available, like how to exclude certain tags or make my searches more precise. Picking up new tips and tricks is always fun!
It’s always especially satisfying when we can help someone with a tricky problem, too. I’m sure we’ve all had frustrating moments trying to get a website or piece of software to behave, and when you can get an answer from a real live human being that solves your problem, that’s a great feeling. I’m happy to be able to provide that help to users.