Asking advice · 10:38am Jul 8th, 2015
The one thing I've always loved about this community since joining almost three years ago is just how friendly and helpful everyone is.
I remember trawling deviantart and seeing drawings that were, if I'm totally honest, below par, and the internet had -up until that point- had such a profound effect on my mindset that I'd expect such images to go either completely unloved or filled with words of how unbelievably shit they were.
Source. This, however, is a pretty awesome drawing of a horse!
Alas, no. All I found were words of encouragement, tips in how to improve in the future, and overall admiration for their work, and that was a big deal to me. That level of love drew me in. It's like how a six year old draws something incomprehensible, but their mother will still hang it up on the fridge door and say it's magnificent. It's not patronising in the slightest; it's genuine encouragement.
I found that same level of love in other areas of the fandom, including the music scene, where musical newbies were given ideas, tips and a helping hand into making better music, and appreciating it for what it is despite wobbly vocals, weak lyrics and general roughness around the edges.
Like many others, this was one of the first songs I heard from the fandom, and it's awesome!
I was rekindled with those feelings recently. I've been here on FimFiction since October 2014, and was surprised at the number of views my earlier works got. I never expected to get 100+ views on my first stories. Hell, I'd have been happy to get 10. Most of my stories have also garnered largely positive responses, with a couple of exceptions ('Sweaty in the Barn' had a terrible title initially, and Super PonyBall X is just a badly-written troll fic), but I feel - in terms of views and followers - that I haven't really gained much traction in the nine months I've been on here.
Until this week.
I sought out advice from redditors and other sources of brony, seeking out ways of reaching a larger audience, and things have actually improved slightly. Up until this week, I was oblivious about how much groups could help spread my story to its target audience, and I realise my lack of social interaction left stories to collect dust once they'd passed through the 'new stories' or 'recently updated' sections.
In the past few days, I've seen groups breathe new life into my old stories, I've averaged almost 50 views per day in the past week, which is much better than the 17 view average I was getting prior to this week. I know it'll taper off, but it's been a nice little confidence-boost. What won't taper off is the fact I've almost doubled my followers in the past two weeks. Yeah, okay, 11 still isn't much, but at least I'm into double figures now, and it's encouragement to keep going.
That said, if anyone has any words of encouragement, or helpful tips on how to expand or make my writing better, by all means drop me a comment, and thank you for your support!
