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Shouting into the void.
7 years ago
General
It's hard to be a writer, sometimes.
You know my main account, with the fursuits and the plushes and sometimes drawings, has about a thousand submissions, and about two thousand watchers. More or less every time I submit something, I get two new watchers. (I mean, it's less regular than that, but you get the idea.)
I have over 300 submissions here and not quite 150 watchers. So roughly every other time I submit something, I get a new watcher. I suspect I probably do relatively well for a writer, too. I feel like my writing is relatively good. I think that it's above the average I see around here, as far as quality goes.
But it can be frustrating, shouting at the void.
It's honestly a big part of the motivation behind my finally seeking conventional publication. I never had submitted anything before. I said I wrote for fun, and if an opportunity came along I'd take it (which I did) but I wasn't going to beat myself against the brick wall of rejections.
I don't know, though... I think that brick wall may sometimes be kinder than the echoing silence of putting stories out and getting nothing at all back. (People don't tend to leave comments, either. My most commented on thing ever here has 27, but getting more than one or two is very much the exception and many get none at all.) A rejection is at least a response. Silence... You sometimes wonder if anybody is actually reading at all, or if they're just checking the description and bailing without reading a word of the story itself. And if nobody is reading, what's the point of uploading them here? Might as well just keep them to myself, like I used to do when I started writing.
This isn't any kind of dramatic "I'm quitting!" flounce or anything. I'll keep uploading things. Just... It's hard. It's very hard.
You know my main account, with the fursuits and the plushes and sometimes drawings, has about a thousand submissions, and about two thousand watchers. More or less every time I submit something, I get two new watchers. (I mean, it's less regular than that, but you get the idea.)
I have over 300 submissions here and not quite 150 watchers. So roughly every other time I submit something, I get a new watcher. I suspect I probably do relatively well for a writer, too. I feel like my writing is relatively good. I think that it's above the average I see around here, as far as quality goes.
But it can be frustrating, shouting at the void.
It's honestly a big part of the motivation behind my finally seeking conventional publication. I never had submitted anything before. I said I wrote for fun, and if an opportunity came along I'd take it (which I did) but I wasn't going to beat myself against the brick wall of rejections.
I don't know, though... I think that brick wall may sometimes be kinder than the echoing silence of putting stories out and getting nothing at all back. (People don't tend to leave comments, either. My most commented on thing ever here has 27, but getting more than one or two is very much the exception and many get none at all.) A rejection is at least a response. Silence... You sometimes wonder if anybody is actually reading at all, or if they're just checking the description and bailing without reading a word of the story itself. And if nobody is reading, what's the point of uploading them here? Might as well just keep them to myself, like I used to do when I started writing.
This isn't any kind of dramatic "I'm quitting!" flounce or anything. I'll keep uploading things. Just... It's hard. It's very hard.
I feel this is a thing that is common for readers, because if i'm reading a story it dosn't occur to me to write a comment after a chapter, i'm so deep in the story i want to read on and on and on. Especialy if the story is good. Then i look at the clock and it's in the middle of the night, i should probably go to sleep and again no comment left :(
Another thing, i often don't know what i should comment, the same thing everytime ? "Good chapter, i'm exited for the next!" Does that feel empty after a while or doeas it at pressure to the writer to write more and faster ? Often i'm reading writers saying the people should stop asking for the next chapter cause it's done when it's done and writing is no fun if there is a angry mob behind you yelling "type faster". Another thing for some is probably the fear of saying the wrong thing ? And starting a discussion about a specific part of a chapter wich results in oposing opinions so the author has to play police wich is a hard thing to do and would drain excitement for writing more. But that could also be just my thougtprocess i'm not sure.
In a simmilar line like guri256 said, it is also difficult to broadly apreciate the work a writer does if you are selecting only specific stories and leave out the rest. That does screw the broad picture again so someone could think a story isn't as good as another one. At the same time it is a weakness of this site to follow a story with many chapters so you get less feedback here, i saw that you updated a story here and read it on AO3, cause it's nicer for that kind of stuff, manly because it is a site special made for fiction texts... yeah. I've seen many fanficts blow up in reading-numbers and faves and comments for new fandomes, for older ones it is extremly rare to find good stories because the writer gets next to no apreciation cause there are so few people who look out for that story. I don't know if you look for this but an example i can give from the top of my head were the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild fanfics, it was new and brought a ton of people, at the same time other storys in the Zelda fandom wich are at least as good don't get the sime kind of audience and often end incomplete. Those incomplete stories are one thing that far to often stops me from starting to read if i see it was last updatet 2 month ago. Did the writer give up ? Will i ever get to see what the vision for the story was ? I have a whole bookmark-folder of stories i really liked but ended up abandoned which is incredibly sad.
Well, i'm now looking at the time and i see i took more an hour to write this comment and i hope it sheds some light on the whole thing, also i hope it is possible to follow what i'm trying to say cause i'm really bad at this. To end on a positive note i want to say i realy like your stories, even if i don't read all of them, you should definitly keep on writing stories because you are good at it and have fun doing so.
(Also, for me personally, "I'm excited for the next" is also fine! It's "how long will it be for the next?" and "please write the next!" and "write a sequel!" and other things that are actually bothering me to write more/faster, rather than just saying they're happy. "How long" questions are especially annoying, because I don't know! It takes as long as it takes, and some days I write ten thousand words in one mad dash while other days I don't write at all.)
Thank you for your thoughtful response, though. :)