Oh, multifannishness definitely lends itself to different avenues (solutions?)! And A:TLA fandom is so ginormous that I have barely scratched the surface of it (though the DW contingent I'm currently nesting in is quite amazeface), so you may want to spend some time exploring that.

But, moving back to the topic at hand, I do think that a large part of it, for me, was literally building the community/circle in which I could take these paths and learn and read and experiment, and a lot of that wasn't fandom-specific at all (those 'fails and rages were good for some things, heh!). I don't think I've ever written for fandom-at-large, but now instead of writing solely for me, I have a specific audience of friends who want to see the same kinds of stories I want to see, and that's helped me more than anything else. :)