Sep
27th
2014
First World Author Problems · 10:45pm Sep 27th, 2014
Cataloging the suffering of all us poor writers with thousands of followers.
"My story was only in the feature box for three days? Didn't anyone like it?"
"God, I hate that one tiny pixel of red in the likes-dislikes ratio."
"It's so awful to reply to all your comments, refresh the page, and find that fifteen more have been added in the last five minutes."
"I'm so well-established that the top ten entries in my story box never change. It's getting so repetitive."
"Would the EQD pre-readers please stop spamming me with e-mails telling me my story's been accepted?"
Any I forgot? Add them to the comments or do a blog entry of your own! If two or three of us do I'm sure we'll reach at least half the readers on the site.
I caught myself actually thinking #4 and I couldn't stop myself
"My story wasn't in the feature box? What in the flying fuck happened?
"
2488771
Oh, for sure. Or the "come on, the story's been up for ninety minutes already! What's taking so long?" variant.
2488756
Wanted to point out "Moon Glows Gently" being a new one in that list, but it is actually a half year old. Time flies by with your stories
2488776 Still trying to figure out when to best post a story, myself. That thing I let you peek at is practically ready apart for a bit of a rewrite of the end (it's grown to about 20k words since you saw it!
). I wanna maximise my chances, dangit. 1500 followers isn't enough to guarantee a feature slot! 
I do none of those.
*sweats under coat*
Edited previous error: *don't*
2488799 So you've done all of them then? Double negatives, yo.
I think a bit of my heart just went up in bloodfire.
2488815 Whoops. Guess I told on myself then
Seriously though, thanks for pointing that out.
Actually, I really hate this, though usually it's just one. :B
You know, if you want to swap...
"My 10,000 word new story has been up for 90 minutes. Where's the comments?"
"I submitted my story 20 minutes ago. What's taking you, story approvers?"
"Hello all my followers, just posting a blog to tell you I'm not dead yet!"
"I spent a great deal of time writing this beautiful story just for it to be outshined by the trashy clopfic I wrote in an afternoon?!"
"I'm not sure if I like the way the fandom is going right now, this may be it for me, I'll decide in the morning, my followers =/"
It is not easy basking in the adulation of hundreds, if not thousands of readers. Much harder than people realize. Nothing but work work work!
2488833
"The first comment! ...'cool story, I liked it?' WHERE'S THE EIGHT-PARAGRAPH ESSAY PRAISING MY BRILLIANCE?"
New comments are like crack
I must have them
This story that I wrote that is nothing like my previous stories which garnered my thousands of followers only got 50 views?
Magnum Opus Dissonance. No exceptions.
Oh, I crafted this brilliant story! My 2800 followers are going to love it!
Oh... 300 views and 90 thumbs up. R-right. Okay. I guess I write a 3000 word schlock story for fun.
I see. Uh... 1300 thumbs up, 5000 views, 1500 favorites, and two days at #1 in the featured box. Okay, I guess...
How about "700 favorites and only 70 comments? Why don't more people comment?"
My most recent was "My story was in the feature box for three days? How the fuck did I pull that off?"
Seriously, it was just 5000 words of Twilight and Celestia chatting and playing games that Twilight kept losing at.
2488787
I don't think it really matters when. I've been posting things around midnight thanks to my work schedule, and I've hit the box a few times.
2488866
Man, after the thing from two weeks ago that phrase always makes me double-take.
I too am spectacularly bad at predicting what will become popular. For example, I posted Late Afternoon of the Zombie Gerbil Horde and Hard Reset on the same day... expecting the former to take off and the latter to vanish into obscurity. Didn't quite work out that way.
"It's annoying that so many people like my writing that they keep asking me about a sequel to the awesome story I wrote."
2488866
Mhmm
"How did i get some many likes at 3 in the morning." A personal question mine.
2488866
Well, I do have to point out that something you wrote for fun is more likely to be fun to read. Neil Gaiman's Make Good Art address mentions the importance of working on a project because you're excited about the project itself, and not because you want the [comments, favs, whatever.]
Oh, no. Twilight's Library wants to feature another of my stories. That means I need to update that list of questions and answers they post along with it.
Ack! Another artist sending me beautiful fanart of my story? This is getting annoying.
Darnit, there's another group created around one of my OCs. Can't these people make their own?
Somebody created a TVTropes page on my story, and it sucked me into that darned site for a whole hour!
All I'm getting is positive comments on my story. Why won't anybody give me criticism so I can improve as a writer?
Being too good an author, hmm? You're like some kind of pony Midas, only instead of gold it's high quality horse words.
In all seriousness, I'm a helluva lot more humble than this...
Fixed. A real popular author would know this.
Hmm as for my own...
"Yes, I will continue [x] story soon, once [reasons] are done."
That's sorta the only one I've used in 2 months... as we all know, I don't have any suffering-artist or first-world problems.
Huh. I find myself strangely intrigued by the metaphor here. Does this mean I'm a second-world author? Was I Balkanized from some massive Soviet card game hegemony? Do I have a free press? Is the United Authors concerned about my equine rights policies?
2488837 This, so hard, especially on fanfic.net. I mean, I don't want an essay, but would two sentences saying, "This part right here was f***ing awesome" be so hard?
2489431
I have written stories where the entire time I'm like, "oh man, this one line right here. This is genius. Everyone's going to love this."
And then the comments come.
And I wait.
And nobody mentions it at all.
ARRRRRRRGH!
2488889
STOP ASKING! I'LL COME OUT WITH THE TASTE OF THE GOOD LIFE SEQUEL WHEN... oh, was that hypothetical? I kinda flashed back to a lot of other comments for a second there.
2489125
That last one is something I can relate to. But, hey, that's why groups like WRITE exist, right?
There is no guessing what will and will not be popular at times. Some things catch on, while others create controversy. Some do both. Some stay with us while others are a flash in the pan. And then some die a quiet, lonely death, unnoticed by the world.
runluaurun.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/drop.jpg
I've always feared, if I become popular at any point, to suffer from the swaming comments. I never though of the rest, but damn...it's tought to be popular.
2488880 Not quite at all
2488991 You see, the earth is round and stuff.
What, this other author who has opinions different than mine has more followers? I don't like where this fandom has gone! Q.Q
2488837 Still being written. That is why the first comment is short, it was fast to write.
That second one is the reason to me never posting any stories.
2490188 "Ohh look 20 new commen-- What the hell? Stop asking me about whats going to happen next. Just wait and see!"
You add a new pic. of fan art to the cover of an old story, and the views double in a day.
Is that thing? I would imagine it's a thing. I just read a story from my read later list (put there a year ago) because I noticed awesome cover art.
2489459
Or when you post another popular story some weeks or months on, it causes more people to trawl through your older stuff.
And then, in those months later, they comment on that story, and finally, finally find that line you like...
... and by then you feel morbidly embarrassed you liked it so much in the first place. What were you thinking?
2488834
Which could lead into a First World Reader Problem blog:
"Why you no update?"
"Are you dead?"
"Are you the ghost of Robert Heinlein|Douglas Adams|Ian M Banks?"
No, I just stayed at a holiday inn express last night.
2488837
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2489393
third word author here
That is to say, I gave up after the third word and never became an author