Once again, I jump in on a thread late...

You wrote: 

On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, Mr. the Rutsch wrote:
3) It's best to have a short attention span: that prevents your 
stories from growing too long, thus you can turn out more.  And it 
defenitely saves you from dangerous distractions like novel-writing.

If quantity is more important than quality, I guess this is true.  
Myself, I admire writers who can commit themselves to a long work, 
provided it's a *structured* long work, not a work that's long simply 
because the writer hasn't yet decided to stop writing.  Taking the time 
to write a long work of which you can be proud takes a lot of nerve and 
a lot of heart, especially since you have to accept that the public may 
not be interested in it.

Unfortunately, quantity does seem to be more important in terms of 
recognition for fanfic writers.

------RM