What Next? · 10:48pm Dec 1st, 2017
This is kind of important, as it concerns my most recent stories, and getting this off my chest feels like the best decision. Some of you may think I'm overreacting once more, and I probably am blowing things out of proportion, but I cannot stay silent on the matter. Anyway, I'll explain everything after the break.
Earlier today, I posted a new story about Starlight and Trixie. I had a lot of fun writing this story, and I spent over a month working on it, even rewriting it from scratch since the first draft hadn't gone so well. Unfortunately, despite putting a ton of effort into the story, it received a terrible reception on Discord chats and was ignored to the point where I began questioning why I even bothered posting the story and putting so much effort into it. It was a similar story for my Chrysalis story, albeit to a much lesser degree, as that had the benefit of getting a visible rating after ninety minutes and mostly positive reception. I'm just so disappointed in myself and feel like I haven't improved whatsoever, letting people down or merely relying on dumb luck when it comes to stories.
Sometimes, I feel like my stories are better than in reality before the publishing process. I've done everything from removing or editing paragraphs that are too telly, outlining the story's events, and thinking about whether the characters' actions make sense or not. Nevertheless, the result is usually the same, and I resume this endless cycle of wondering why I bothered writing the story in the first place. Even after looking for exhaustive edits, learning about different writing techniques, getting help from brilliant people, and other important things, it sometimes feels like I'm trapped in this endless cycle of stress or confusion whenever things suddenly go wrong.
I haven't decided what's next for my time on the site, but I do not plan on leaving. However, I am utterly lost at what makes a good story, and I'll keep alienating people as I repeat these anxiety-inducing episodes. Seriousness doesn't work for me, and silliness fares even worse. It just gets to a point where the only thing on my mind is the following:
"What the fuck am I supposed to do?"
Anyway, I'll try to resume writing in the future, but I think taking an extended hiatus for a few weeks will be for the best. I apologize for stirring up trouble with my anxiety in various Discord servers, which rightfully annoyed some people to where one of them questioned my maturity. Well, I'll try to figure out where to go from here.
Source
So... are you asking to be told what to do?
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Kinda, but the problem stems from that I have no idea what's necessary when writing a good story, and each solved problem results in discovering two dozen more problems. It's hard to know what needs asking when there's so much wrong, which leaves me overwhelmed and unsure what to do.
Write porn, it's the only thing that sell here.
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Erotica is a tough genre to master, let alone be decent at writing, so maybe the next best thing will suffice.
Mana, let me tell you something about myself over this last year:
I have published 9 stories over the entire course of 2017. And as I wrote every single one of them, I felt the same anxiety that you feel when publishing a story and then quickly hating it because of personal feelings. However, I quickly got over that attitude fast because all I could do was do the best I can. By hating everything that I did, it created nothing but pain. To be blunt, it is stupid. And you are being stupid with this lame attitude against yourself.
I don't know what Discords you are putting yourself into, but it seems you put yourself in bad situations. Get yourself out of them. Pry yourself from negativity! Talk to those who you trust or who you know will listen to you. I will if need be. Just PM me. Give yourself a better light to walk in. Why do I hear about your bad experiences on other Discord chats, but see a very well received story here on Fim Fiction? Something does not add up and I believe you might let other people's words into your head much more than you think or are willing to admit.
I KNOW how much you put effort into your Chrysalis story. And back when I was editing it and when you told me, "If you don't like it, you can stop reading it," was very offensive. I wanted to read what you had because I knew how hard you were on yourself and figured I could do what I can to assist with your plot.
And guess what? NOTHING TO THE PLOT NEEDED TO BE CHANGED! I gave no bitter remarks and said anything along the lines of, "this makes no sense." The only thing I did was fix grammatical errors. Yes, you do need help with grammar, but there is nothing wrong about that flaw. A good amount of writers on this site suffers poor grammar skills. I have written stories with poor grammar and yet got very good reception because of the story.
And I will be honest, I do want people to read my Who you Work for story, but I fear that people will look away from it because of how my sentences looked. Here is the reality of that story: it is finished. People have read it; people have loved it; people have critiqued it; people are waiting for the sequels. Instead of moping about how bad my writing was over the last two and a half years it took to write it, I reflect on how my readers responded to my chapters and overall story.
I will advise that taking a break is a good thing. Write when you feel like writing. But reflect. Understand WHY you feel so negatively about yourself. When you know why, you will know how to combat your negative emotions, or at least, I would hope so. To save you the trouble on asking me, I will tell you WHY I felt so against my own writings:
Lack of attention. When there is less attention onto something, there are even less chances for someone to respond or comment on a story. After understanding WHY I began to be against my stories, I threw that nastiness away. I looked at why I wanted to write. I want to give a story that will move people. And when I saw those who found my stories and gave it attention, the numbers did not matter. Why should I be so focused on veiws? It is a foolish way to want to write. I want to write a good story. But in order to write a good story is to write. And write, and write, and write, and write.
And when critisism is given, understand their WHY as well. Understand why someone may dislike your story. You do not have to cave in and cater to one person's view. I have been given critisism that I discarded because it was no use to me, but I saw why that person disliked something I wrote.
This is no way a means to bash on you, Mana. However, I will do what I can to shake yourself awake. Wake up and see what you have built already. Look at who follows you. Look at who admires your writing. And look at those who care about you. I don't have to look at what I have already done because I know what has been done for myself. Once you know and no longer have to constantly look around for your joy in writing, you will always have a joy for writing.
Freak, out.
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Yeah, I'm not going to deny that I've been accidentally rude to you and others with my anxiety problems, which is not an excuse whatsoever, and I am not exactly wise. A lot of my concerns are related to how many views a story gets and how people look at the story on Discord chats and the like, as it gives me an idea on whether I'm doing something right or not. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post notes, I am most likely blowing things out of proportion, and it's something I have struggled against for years. I am trying to fix these problems, but the sad truth is that there are no easy fixes.
I understand why people would not like my stories, which is why I am trying to learn from criticism instead of brushing it aside, but there's so much that goes into writing. Anyway, I sincerely apologize to you and everyone else I have acted rudely toward ever since I began writing on FiMFiction. It'll take me a long time before I feel more comfortable with putting myself in situations such as publishing stories and adapting to the site's changing preferences, and I guess I'll try to keep improving from here. It just may take a long time.
Been there done that.
Alright listen up because I care and I really want you to know how much by at least doing an extended comment.
I'll make a comment to your story and say what I have to say about it but let me just say a few things here first.
Let's start with a small reality check.
1)You're not gonna be hit always.
You've been featured. You know it, I know it, we all know it and before you start no you're not ungrateful shit just happens. Not all your stories are going to reach 500+ views. Not all your fics are going to be swarmed with comments like this. Not all your fics are going to be awesome.
2)You're experiencing Magnum Opus Dissonance. This might not be your magnum opus but generally speaking this "trope" means that your readers don't find what you think awesome. They will often find the "easiest" or most "irrelevant" thing to obsess over. They will think your worst as best, and your best as worst. Which brings my next point
3)Readers are often well... idiots? No that's too harsh. Readers are ephemeral.
Let's just say readers aren't critics, and critics don't always agree with each other. I remember in the movie "A thousand and one nights" there's this lady who's storytelling and capacity to keep the King's/Sultan's attention keeps her alive. She goes to the Master Storyteller and he basically says you gotta catch the reader's attention at the first given opportunity.
That's not always true but there's a lot of people who simply don't want to user their minds while reading fanfiction. They want simple, easy, mindless fun. This is why smut exists afterall.
So as a writer you gotta be at least a bit... deceitful in your writing. Not too complicated at each individual part, but as someone who was in the production of Wall-E said... You gotta fool them into working for their food.
4)Dramatize
I think I've given you this kind of advice. It might not always be true or fitting to your writing style but you could try that. Dramatize, write the extreme. Write about someone brooding over loss. It's not just theme either. Draw the moment out, enhance the emotion, stretch em, mix em, turn them around.
Litterally let yourself be the character and let it all loose like a mad beast.
5)LOVE WRITING MORE THAN THE WRITING OR THE READER
I don't think I have to mention how much more important it is that you love what you write than the reception of it. As you said you love this, I know you love this, your friends know you love this. That is more important than getting views, or comments, and whatnot. As I said the readers are ephemeral. They come, they go, they may or may not follow you or read more of your stuff. You'll be here and keep writing a lot more than them.
6)Read more than you write.
There's something out there that says you gotta read 10k words for every thousand you write. I could say stuff like mimicry is the greatest form of flattery yada yada yada but generally speaking the more you read the more you learn, the better you write.
7)Watch Overly Sarcastic Productions
They're fun and you're gonna learn lots of stuff.
8)Advertising groups are a thing.
Never cling to something so much that it paralyzes you. I get it you're insecure, I'm insecure. No really I am insecure and obsess over the tinies of mistakes and loop back into them. I mean even if "Friendship Lost..." is by far the story I'm more proud in... it seems that the more people I show it I get different and new complaints. Nobody is ever satisfied and appreciative and it's far easier for people to complain than to give praise. And they usually do the latter later into their comment just not to be negative Nancies.
Shit I'm doing that now aren't I? Sorry mate I've never been the best complimenter and I haven't read a lot of your stories but I'm always honest with what I read.
I mean it could be worse. You could be like me and not write for years on end or write tiny amounts even if you have thousands of ideas. And if you don't to look at it differently take the realist way and acknowledge your weaknesses and strengths. Most importnatly don't push yourself too hard. Give yourself some space, forgive yourself, pick him up. Or get friends to help you, to distract you, to listen to you.
Personally airing my grievances seems to deflate them and after talking about them the majority of the issue often tends to dissappear. ((then again that creates another issue where I don't trust myself to be serious in one issue but... eh))
Don't obsess over "don't show don't tell". It's a writing style that fits to certain fics and others not. For example I don't think there would be a point where in a fairytale one would care about "show don't tell". Focus on giving the moment your own personal touch. Most of all write with passion.
Also don't obsess over plotholes or sense. So long as it's not universe-breaking/immersion-breaking I'm fine with that. So what if you write about a woman who can kick more arse than men even if the averages say otherwise? So what if your formula of energy conversion of the transformation of the changelings is not 100% accurate? ((on that note see the video "Write what you know" from Overly Sarcastic Productions in the playlist I showed you)) You're in a magical world of horses where "magic" exists. So long as you don't push it too much you can do anything. I mean look at anime... I've seen so much ridiculousness in anime that from a point on I've learned that if you obsess over the calculations/power levels too much you're gonna have a bad time and not enjoy the show.
Except "Warm Bodies" ((not an anime but a movie)) where the "good" zombies/zombies-lite started becoming humans with... love. WTF!? Yeah fuck that movie.
But yeah back to our "realism" talk. Often-times the readers don't care about it, and those that do should realize that not all characters are acting rationally because of stress, preference, character flaws e.t.c. and that retrospection even for them... is a bitch.
There's only two reasons you should ever gauge why you should write a story. 1)You want to 2)You enjoy it
NOTHING MORE NOTHING LESS. Don't write for me, don't write for someone else, don't write because someone told you to or peer pressure or because "you have to write frequently". Your enjoyment is more important to you ((and to me)) than the enjoyment of the reader. Your fic is your home. Your guests can say that your home is bad/unclean/doesn't have much style but they're in your turf... they can get out if they get out of line.
Again don't push yourself. Let it flow, and let it grow. Don't be impatient. It took me YEARS to get good at this. You know that when I joined and started writing in the end of season 2 I didn't capitalize my "i"s? And that I used triple dots (elipsis)... to the point that my editor called me "THE ELIPSIS MURDERER". NO SERIOUSLY I CAN GET HIM TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT!
Don't push yourself about it. And come to me if you do. I'll smother you in a hug about it. LOL
A good story. Boy now that's a big talk. It depends on the perspective. Again... just focus on enjoying writing more than you enjoy the reception.
As for the anxiety inducing episodes... don't fret it. People need to understand you're not a perfect writing machine. If they can't fuck em.
Have you considered writing about a character sharing your own experiences/issues or something?
I'd suggest screaming in the wind and letting it all loose but hey that's just how I would do... if I had the chance.
Don't let it get under your skin. Give it time, read something. Laugh, cry, smile, share some memories. I believe in you mate. You're gonna be fine.
Take your time.
Bug me I don't mind. Just don't expect quick responses. Take a deep breath bro. You don't need to apologize to me.
Now now now... no defeatism. Don't worry. You'll get up and things are going to get better.
4739711 I know it will be difficult to overcome something that is a part of you. Even I have that issue of trying to not act odd, yet my aspergers sometimes gets a hold of me. I don't expect you to change overnight; just know that myself and others care about you.
And don't be afraid to ask me to look over a story you wrote. I don't like to ask people to look over my stories because I feel like I am forcing my story on them. However, it is good to discuss your stories with someone you trust will give an honest opinion. And I trust that when I finish my one shot, you will do just that for me.
That's what friends are for.
I enjoy your stories. I'm bummed out when the longer ones stay incomplete, but that's just what it is often in fan fiction. As for good stories, your weakest stories are still head and shoulders above most stories on this site (my contribution included) so hang in there.
Nothing wrong with taking a break, but don't let the bastards wear you down. 