This is my life

Yeah, I've lost fic a few times (I was super paranoid about it, so I had it at least two places at all times, though I wasn't careful with versioning so then it because a pain in the ass because I didn't know where my most recent copy was), so I can see the appeal of that.

I just... for me, the quality of a story suffers if I'm not writing it with a throughline, with a thought about the overall structure, plot, pacing, and characterization. Those things are all weak in the piece I've been posting, and if I'd done it as I normally write, I would have tweaked a lot of things to make it better.

I don't honestly know if it would be okay to tweak a posted chapter, whether or not you put a note on it. Because I hate reading WIPs, I don't read serials. I imagine people who do would be miffed about it, though, because they know the story so far, and if you write a chapter that doesn't jive with what they know, they're going to be confused about it - though I suppose if you added a note on the beginning of the chapter, that might take care of it.

I don't have a problem fixing typos or other things of that nature in posted fic - no one's going to miss a typo if it's not there. But making big changes (a character's motive or a gift not given) would mess things up, I think. For me, at least, if not for the reader.

As for comments, I do edit sometimes, but I try not to more than once, and it's usually for an ETA rather than typos (I try to re-read before posting to get rid of those). Just generally, I don't think typos matter that much in a format like journaling, and I know that every time I edit, the person I was responding to gets another email - and I don't want to flood anyone's inbox.