For an Author: Happiness is… · 5:56am Dec 14th, 2015
I write this sitting with a hot mug of ginger tea on a rainy last day of Hanukkah, contemplating miracles. Not being particularly religious—holidays are an ethnic tradition for me and not a ritual—I realize nonetheless that something has changed for me this year for the good.
Writing.
I am writing fiction again! As a published science fiction and fantasy writer—by avocation—who quit the profession, this is indeed a miracle.
I discovered MLP quite by accident. I had watched a Bullwinkle episode on Netflix, then had flipped through the other kid shows. I had remembered hearing about My Little Pony peripherally and had wondered what the noise was about. That noise had probably come from an early generation version, but that night I luckily selected Friendship is Magic. Like Lena Hall, it changed my life for the better, reminding me that it was alright to be caring and sentimental, and to especially value friendship.
It took a year, but I noticed the Equestria Daily Writer's Training Grounds prompts and thought, What the hay.
The ride has been a good one. Writing is totally a zen thing, which I may write about in another post. I took the opportunity to write in first person, something I never did professionally. I like it. Writing in third person poses a problem of point of view, and if I choose to stay firmly in the head of one character (the de facto standard form in SF), it can be challenging not to let the omniscient narrator stick her nose in with inappropriate comments. No such problem with first person. And there is a bonus: I can write conversationally without worry that it will sound wrong. With third person, I feel the need to narrate formally. In first person, the character can narrate with all her verbal mannerisms and locutions intact. It feels very personal. I become the character (that zen thing, again).
Because the EqD WTG prompts were often weekly, this also meant I had to write every week, formulate an idea, draft the story, and clean it in time to post. Discipline for a writer is money. An author must learn to love the deadline to succeed. And I do. Spoiler: I'm a procrastinator.
But wait, there's more.
Not only am I writing, but people are reading what I've written! I cannot fully express how cool* that is, but by way of comparison I can say one reason why I quite writing SF. I spent an immense amount of time writing novels. At best, the the publishing industry is a fickle beast, and I piled up a backlog of a half-dozen works, including one that later morphed into a three book epic fantasy. But I wasn't selling. Put another way, I spent uncounted hours writing ideas I wanted to share with the world, and because of a lack of readers, I was sharing with nobody. As I've written, most recently a week ago, a story without readers is a tragedy. I decided I wanted a life and quit writing.
So, now I am writing MLP fan fiction. And, by an online process that seems miraculous to me, I have both readers and fans. Even my least read stories have been read by a hundred or so readers. My ideas—my memes—have taken wing; they have played inside the head of so many of you readers…
I am humbled.
So, happiness for an author—for me. and I can only speak for myself—is writing good stories and having them actually read. In the terms of my postings on Fimfiction, this translates directly to page views. Perhaps I am naïve, but I translate page views into readers, assuming that any reader who has displayed the actual short story text will read it through. The one time one of my stories, Mark Misconception, hit the Featured box (aka What's Hot) at number two for almost a hundred hours, I felt giddy. Fifteen hundred views in just one day. Something else, indeed. I was Pony Famous for a while (and that's the topic of an different mostly written blog post).
With the pages views comes other things that also make me as an author happy.
First and most obvious, people not only read a story but also like it. Pressing that thumbs-up icon is amazing. The way I look at it, and this is counter to the guidelines posted in the Fimfiction FAQ, if you click the thumbs-up, you're telling the author that the story is somehow special. This is how I treat the mechanism as I read through stories here. I suppose that there are literalists out here that always either click thumbs-up if the liked the story and thumbs-down** if they didn't, and I think there may be few who do who read my stories. I do get thumbs-downs on every story I write, but I find this proportional to how challenging I made the plot. One story ran a 50-50 split and after contemplation, I decided this mean that I pushed some people to think beyond their breaking point. They thought about what I wrote and rejected it. But they thought about it—that's a win. As the old saw goes, you have to crack some eggs to make an omelette.
Second, people actually save the stories they read into a folder named Favorites. If you don't write on the site, you may not realize it but Fimfiction reports to the author when you save a story to a folder, whether that be Favorites or Read It Later or whatever. To me, saving my story to Favorites (or an awesome folder like Touched My Soul) signifies that you cared enough about the story that you decided you might want to read it again. Perhaps you also wanted to share your discovery with others. By default, Favorites and Read It Later are public, meaning that visitors (or nosey authors), can discover what stories you cared about and find more good stuff (since you like what I like, obviously).
Third, people leave comments. This can be a mixed bag. Trolls exist even here. But on a whole, folks are very friendly and they share their enthusiasm for your ideas, and my italics are intentional. Enthusiasm. What a boost to read such comments! Others care so much for your story that they will take the time to help you make it better by reporting typos and grammar faux pas, and sometimes speak to POV and plot. It all makes a properly egoless author happy, and certainly me, because not only did they read and understand critically what I wrote, they're actively trying to make me better for next time. It is all good.
Fourth, and not less important in this list, is watchers. Watchers are fans as far as I am concerned. These are people who want to know when you write something because what they read was good enough, entertaining enough, or touched their soul enough, that they want to read the next big thing. When you Watch me as a author, I feel the love. And strive further to please.
Last, I've struck up conversations with just a few of you, sometimes in comments, sometimes in private messages, and made friends. You know who you are. Friendship is Magic.
So, now you may no understand why I have been trying to maximize the number of readers I get for an particular story. I post when my story will spend as much time on the front page of the site as possible so as to garner the most readers possible, and then post my stories to various Fimfiction groups where people have expressed their interest in this or that topic. (Posting to groups generates anywhere from a trickle to a torrent of readers over the week and months following the initial post. It is gratifying to see older stories getting discovered, liked, favorited, and commented.) I also post to the Equestria Daily Writer's Training Grounds, which brings in it's own small load of readers.
This week was no different than most, but today I feel the miracle of it all.
I delayed posting Rediscovering Harmony aka Lessons Learned in order to assure the best chance of finding it readers. I actually revoked the submission last week, as a previous blog elucidated. I always hope to get enough likes and views to get a story into the Popular Stories column (the top 50), especially near the top so as to increase visibility. Making it to the Featured box (the top 10) is wonderful, as it provides maximum self-sustaining visibility. New readers have to see your story to know they want to read it. This week's entry did make it to #12 overall at one point late Saturday night, but not much beyond that. It did get a solid readership, though, and I do feel that it was worth the effort.
You read my story, after all. Didn't you?
I had written earlier, "A story without readers is a tragedy," but a story with readers is happiness.
* In the publishing industry, unless you have an online presence, you only learn that people are reading your books via your publisher's royalty reports. or if you attend conventions as a guest, by meeting fans in person or during book signings. Occasionally, you get fan mail. I so wish I saved the one fan letter I did receive.
** When I read a story, I personally consider the thumb-down button to mean that the story was either (1) poorly written and ignorantly so, or (2) intentionally offensive. So far, I have only clicked this button once. I would recommend this usage to any reader on Fimfiction.
Art is nothing like stories. . .
You know what I love? Ginger tea, with lemons in it. Makes it pretty spicy, and I personally love that flare. It's my favorite kind of tea to this day.
You've said it all. I can barely think of what to comment with.
There was one story I started thinking up approximately 8 years ago, but never tried or even bothered to write it down. That changed when FiM and Fimfiction came into my life. Suddenly, writing became an important part of my routine and I can't go without it
I'm responding here to your thread post since we're apparently not supposed to have discussions there.
Anyways, I think I use Equestria as a medium for my own stories, since its a lot easier to write a short meaningful story without wasting time setting up the universe since its already done for us.
At the same time, I've really fallen out with the MLP:FiM fandom over the past few years. It's just not my thing anymore really, and I don't hang around for the show or even the ponies anymore really, just for the friends I've made while here. As time goes on and I see that MLP is teaching good morals, I can't help but smile at how many people are learning valuable life lessons from the show, but at the same time, I think the show is massively unrealistic in that it too often tries to paint issues as black and white. There's also the whole "try and stay away from violence" message prevalent throughout the series, which I find ironic since friendship coalesces into a giant energy ray to defeat villains time and time again, even if it doesn't outright kill them. I think the biggest reason I've drifted away from the fandom is simply for the lack of death in the show. I know it was originally marketed to little girls, but after the s4 finale w/Tirek, it was pretty clear Hasbro was shifting to appeal to bronies.
In a way, it makes me an edgelord, but at the same time I would've really liked MLP to use its influence over so many people to address more poignant issues, and to make villains that are actually terrifying. For instance, it would have been cool to see a villain that was immune to magic entirely, hence the EoH, Celestia, Luna, any one of the big figures of the series, could do nothing to stop, and at the same time, was completely unreasonable, as in the villain would be dead set on destroying someone or something, and the only way to stop it, would be to kill it. These scenarios where the only option is violence are very real and do happen, and I wish the show would address that. Its part of the reason I came to FiMFiction, because like minded people thought the same thing, and had stories about issues and scenarios like that. Stories that delved deeper into morality than the show.
But, after reading stories for 4 years now, I've grown rather sick of ponies and their fandom. I don't dislike them, but it sometimes amazes me that so few people write stories about the other species of MLP, like the diamond dogs, or minotaurs, or even dragons. I dunno, pony stories have just gotten old for me.
So, as for what brings me happiness as an author? I'm satisfied whenever I get positive feedback on my work, comments on my rich descriptions or captivating fight scenes, but I'm truly happy when I write a story and people think to themselves "huh, that's such an original or creative idea!" Whenever I get people to think about what I've written, that's what makes me truly happy. I continue to write MLP fanfiction because theres literally a world of possibility and other species to explore in MLP, besides the talking pastel equines who've lost my interest as of late.
But uh yeah, that's really all I've got. On to the next adventure.
What is happiness if not a construct of dopamine being received and evaluated in our brains to encourage us to move forward?
And what is happiness if not a necessary emotion for one to feel, in order to advance to the next step of life?
These two questions offer two parallels. The first, one fraught with cynicism, and the second, fraught with idealism. Happiness, I believe, takes a form in between these two extremes, acting as a sort of balance between them.
For me, it's more than simply writing fan fiction. I'm still very young; barely a sophomore in high school. Writing has been my passion since second grade but, under the constructs that I held myself to, I believed I had to wait years until I could write freely. This fandom, this show, and these fans, helped me understand that I could write any time I wanted to or needed to, so long as I had a pen, paper, keyboard, computer, or typewriter (not that I have one).
Happiness comes in the form of progress. If something is moving along, then I am happy. A story is not a static object. It is alive, and moving, and breathing through its words and letters. Readers view it, and comment, and think—and therein lies what is truly amazing for me. Getting people to think about what makes the world tick through a fictional medium is something that I hope to accomplish for each story. I wish to encourage critical thinking, to an extent that old views are challenged, and new ones are investigated.
In that sense, perhaps conflict could be said to be a source of happiness, as paradoxical as it sounds. One of my stories on this site stirred up a tone of controversy, and has a 5:3 like/dislike ratio. It offered up a rather bitter view, but nonetheless, despite people bashing on it, I found that a lot more people liked and accepted this perspective. Incidentally, the people who bashed on it were, to put it simply, religious zealots—the people who bashed on it, but accepted it, and the few who actually admitted to thinking similarly, were less ignorant.
I suppose, then, that real happiness in writing comes in the form of teaching the ignorant something new, with or without something just as new. I believe it can be summed up by the following quote: "Writers take the familiar and make it new, and take the new and make it familiar." As it is an art, it is highly subjective, and therefore so many unique and intriguing ideas can be brought forth from one simple chain of thoughts.
This does not necessarily apply to only fan fiction. I do not plan on always writing pony work, or fan work; I wish to become a professional creative writer in the future. Nonetheless, fan fiction has offered up the chance for me to resume writing, and has allowed me to discover various aspects to my style that I would not have found without it. I've improved over time; I've changed for the better.
Readers are nice, and so are views, and upvotes, and favorites, and comments; but I believe that so long as you enjoyed writing the story, and are willing to look back on it and say, "This could still use improvement," then you are truly happy.
It's good to see that writing for Season 5 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic made you so happy.
You were one of the big newcomers this season. Even though you aren't featured in single posts on EQD, but only in the WTGs, your stories are of an exceptional quality and carry incredibly unique and creative ideas. In regards to creativity, I think Babs' special talent being able to literally cut the time, which makes her not only able to time travel, but also gives her full control over time itself and makes her a time master, is my favourite one. In this fic, she basically has the fate of every citizen in the world in her hooves, because she can, if she wants to, decide to turn back the time and rectify EVERYTHING.
Yeah, that's definitely the most creative idea you had.
I hope you have writing plans for the hiatus..... I wouldn't like to wait for new fics by you until Season 6 starts.
For me as a writer, its hearing from someone,"I like it so far."
Even if someone says,"I enjoyed the story but you need to stop breaking up your paragraphs and writing bland dialog."
Its like having a nice Pina Colada on a boring day.
Um, without alcohol because, well, stuff tends not to crash if I am sober.
Someone saw and liked something I did. Squeee!
For a second, its like that gushy song about Love from The Counting Crows.
Then the bright golden sunshine fades and the clouds come back and its back to work.
I have a tin or lead memory of that wonderful moment. It's enough for me to keep going.
As the pigeons and rats proved in the Skinner boxes, you just have to hit once in a while to be hooked.
3617534
Thank you. That was one of the greatest compliments I have ever received, and special because I sense in your words that I earned it.
3617434
Very interesting plans. Writing, when it flows freely from the tap, is an incredible high. I started writing SF in my junior year of high school and published while at university. If you have the bug—though with the harsh realities of the profession you may wish to cure yourself forthwith—the best advice I can give is to write obsessively and daily, find discipline to finish all but the worst ideas, begin with the new immediately thereafter, grow strong enough not to let the weight of repeated rejection crush your vision of your goals, and learn to take critiques without ego and with the attitude that a reader has given you the gift of insight into what they understood of what you wrote, this latter with the caveat that their perspective is always valid for them but only of clinical interest to you. You get to choose. Know your message, become your characters, live your stories, and good luck to you.
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Yes, you earned it. Definitely.