Fan Involvement

[mere_vanilla]

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but: does anyone else who makes fannish content just... not interact with the "rest" of the fandom until finished with their current project/fan work? Part of the reason for it is that I don't have a lot of time to socialize with everyone else in the fandom and get my own projects done. ...And for whatever reason, I don't even get Dreamwidth notifications until way after the comment's been posted. The other issue is that I don't want to be subconsciously influenced by other folks' interpretation of the characters/universe and then accidentally plagiarize* it.

*Your mileage may vary on whether or not concept/idea theft is even possible in fandom, since it's a shared sandbox of gray legality in the first place.

Any thoughts?