Oy. I feel like I'm annoying somebody out there who knows a thing or two more about what it means to be a writer when I complain that no matter how much I have posted and encouraged response I still don't get any.
I just want to explain why it particularly hurts me so much.
A few years ago I remember I made a frustrated post about how an old friend from high school wasn't reading CP or something, even though she said she was interested. Somehow we got into a conversation that ended with her saying something like "don't expect anyone to read your writing. Consider it a fruitless hobby until you're published and making money." Boy, did that make me upset as an excuse for being a half-involved friend to begin with, and I'll explain why it's relevant again in a moment.
He's There was the first time I ever gained feedback on a large scale and relationships with others for writing something, though. It was the pot of gold. While everything else I've tried to do hasn't caught any eyes despite a lot of time and care put into presentation, as if I made elaborate sculptures the same color and pattern as the walls, HT was proof that persistence pays off. Reviews every week, write-ins by people who helped me understand the Phantom enterprise better or who became friends or online penpals. It was what I wanted out of sharing my writing. It was basically what you could hope for if you published and shared your sweat, blood, and tears, on a small scale. And I got it at the most critical time I could get it: while I was writing, while ideas and inspirations were fresh and may have come from real-life incidents. I wrote/write HT hoping some of these personal subjects (life as a young woman, men/boys, first relationships, our imaginations) hit a cord and make connections between me and other girls, something I lack in real life a lot of the time.
In short, I can't lie. Being a writer has an incredibly social aspect to it, for me, and I need it. I'm writing to speak for myself when in real life I have trouble.
Anyway, when I told my friend/reader Emily that it was hard writing these days to a readership who wouldn't bother to leave a meaningful review of even a few sentences, even if I begged and pleaded, she reasoned that my inconsistency was messing with people's ability to react. As if I was a tennis player who took a long break and then randomly jumped into the court and shot a ball over the net while no one was there to hit it back. I've mixed feelings about the idea that they don't know if they should respond because of how few updates they would get in a year, partly because FF.net has an alert system that emails about 60 people (as of today) when I update. My argument to counter hers was that if I was being an inconsistent poster and citing one reason to be the lack of enthusiasm, that readers would go "I'd better review or she might drift away again."
So then, as you know, I told FF.net readers that until a few reviews were given for the last chapter, I wouldn't post the next. It didn't work. One consistent reviewer left one, and then a couple guests wrote useless things like "Nice chapter, can't wait for more," and "PLEASE POST AGAIN". My test was to see if anyone would think reading more of this story was worth performing an insanely simple task. They didn't. Ouch. The confidence I used to have in myself and the story is still hurt by that, as this technique has usually worked for other writers if they had an interested readership.
Then I told my Facebook page for HT that FF.net was not being responsive, and that from then on they would be the only ones receiving updates. Some assured me they would respond and were sorry that I wasn't getting any feedback. I thought the place was a little more personal and trusted them to do what they said. They didn't. I now post there to crickets.
I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to bonk myself over the head and order myself not to be worrying about this because the time has indeed come where yanking the story offline to prepare for edits and publication is smart, and publication will yield more success with connecting to others. So, basically, I have settled for doing what Former High School Friend suggested: accepting nobody cares until I'm published.
There is a serious problem with this mentality, though, as it assumes that publication = success. That publication = response. Also, that publication is even what'll happen. I really don't know. I don't know if there will be anything better than what is going on right now. The greatest impact that writing this story has had on my life may have already passed, which is why it hurts me when I have to try coercing people to talk to me about my work --- and it doesn't even work.
I feel like a has-been. I'm pushing ahead and wanting to publish, because it's my dream, and hoping if I do that it's successful, but meanwhile all the signs point to everyone passively seeing this on the bookshelf, reading it once, putting it back, and never speaking a word. If things are the way they are now, a few of my friends will buy a copy while the rest rot in my closet. I'm worried. I'm actually really worried that somehow I have been convinced by past experiences that I wrote anything meaningful when that isn't the case. I try to listen to my closer friends when they say this is an unwarranted concern, but the silence from the rest of the world is somehow louder.
I should probably put this under private because it hasn't helped hearing rationalizations for why my readership (if it exists anymore) won't respond, or that "the world just doesn't know how great you are yet". Bless your hearts, it just doesn't help.
-J
I just want to explain why it particularly hurts me so much.
A few years ago I remember I made a frustrated post about how an old friend from high school wasn't reading CP or something, even though she said she was interested. Somehow we got into a conversation that ended with her saying something like "don't expect anyone to read your writing. Consider it a fruitless hobby until you're published and making money." Boy, did that make me upset as an excuse for being a half-involved friend to begin with, and I'll explain why it's relevant again in a moment.
He's There was the first time I ever gained feedback on a large scale and relationships with others for writing something, though. It was the pot of gold. While everything else I've tried to do hasn't caught any eyes despite a lot of time and care put into presentation, as if I made elaborate sculptures the same color and pattern as the walls, HT was proof that persistence pays off. Reviews every week, write-ins by people who helped me understand the Phantom enterprise better or who became friends or online penpals. It was what I wanted out of sharing my writing. It was basically what you could hope for if you published and shared your sweat, blood, and tears, on a small scale. And I got it at the most critical time I could get it: while I was writing, while ideas and inspirations were fresh and may have come from real-life incidents. I wrote/write HT hoping some of these personal subjects (life as a young woman, men/boys, first relationships, our imaginations) hit a cord and make connections between me and other girls, something I lack in real life a lot of the time.
In short, I can't lie. Being a writer has an incredibly social aspect to it, for me, and I need it. I'm writing to speak for myself when in real life I have trouble.
Anyway, when I told my friend/reader Emily that it was hard writing these days to a readership who wouldn't bother to leave a meaningful review of even a few sentences, even if I begged and pleaded, she reasoned that my inconsistency was messing with people's ability to react. As if I was a tennis player who took a long break and then randomly jumped into the court and shot a ball over the net while no one was there to hit it back. I've mixed feelings about the idea that they don't know if they should respond because of how few updates they would get in a year, partly because FF.net has an alert system that emails about 60 people (as of today) when I update. My argument to counter hers was that if I was being an inconsistent poster and citing one reason to be the lack of enthusiasm, that readers would go "I'd better review or she might drift away again."
So then, as you know, I told FF.net readers that until a few reviews were given for the last chapter, I wouldn't post the next. It didn't work. One consistent reviewer left one, and then a couple guests wrote useless things like "Nice chapter, can't wait for more," and "PLEASE POST AGAIN". My test was to see if anyone would think reading more of this story was worth performing an insanely simple task. They didn't. Ouch. The confidence I used to have in myself and the story is still hurt by that, as this technique has usually worked for other writers if they had an interested readership.
Then I told my Facebook page for HT that FF.net was not being responsive, and that from then on they would be the only ones receiving updates. Some assured me they would respond and were sorry that I wasn't getting any feedback. I thought the place was a little more personal and trusted them to do what they said. They didn't. I now post there to crickets.
I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to bonk myself over the head and order myself not to be worrying about this because the time has indeed come where yanking the story offline to prepare for edits and publication is smart, and publication will yield more success with connecting to others. So, basically, I have settled for doing what Former High School Friend suggested: accepting nobody cares until I'm published.
There is a serious problem with this mentality, though, as it assumes that publication = success. That publication = response. Also, that publication is even what'll happen. I really don't know. I don't know if there will be anything better than what is going on right now. The greatest impact that writing this story has had on my life may have already passed, which is why it hurts me when I have to try coercing people to talk to me about my work --- and it doesn't even work.
I feel like a has-been. I'm pushing ahead and wanting to publish, because it's my dream, and hoping if I do that it's successful, but meanwhile all the signs point to everyone passively seeing this on the bookshelf, reading it once, putting it back, and never speaking a word. If things are the way they are now, a few of my friends will buy a copy while the rest rot in my closet. I'm worried. I'm actually really worried that somehow I have been convinced by past experiences that I wrote anything meaningful when that isn't the case. I try to listen to my closer friends when they say this is an unwarranted concern, but the silence from the rest of the world is somehow louder.
I should probably put this under private because it hasn't helped hearing rationalizations for why my readership (if it exists anymore) won't respond, or that "the world just doesn't know how great you are yet". Bless your hearts, it just doesn't help.
-J
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