State of The Stories Report · 1:16am Oct 28th, 2016
The latest chapter release of Five Star Service was, by most measures, a success. It featured for a couple hours for the first time in perhaps a dozen chapters, and gained nine faves for it. However, it also picked up three downvotes, which never happened on a single chapter save the first. That's the problem with featuring; it gets your more notice but you risk more downvotes as well... and downvotes tend to affect your story rating much more than upvotes.
My mind is abuzz with ideas. There's an idea for an Unleash-the-Magic-type Nightmare Night fic I have that I would love to write and release on Halloween but the chance is zero that I could do it even if I started on it right now and worked on it exclusively until then. Ditto for an idea I got from watching Legend of the Everfree, which having seen I think could very easily be tilted towards a UtM-type treatment. However, I'm not going to do either of them right now. I have promises to keep to both myself and others regarding existing stories, so anything new, including sequels, slips off the radar until I can get at least one or two existing stories finished.
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In all honesty, I feel a bit weighed down right now. Weighed down by two stories I want to finish but keep extending themselves. Weighed down by the fact that I can't seem to break through with any of them despite their high quality, getting only a slow drip of new likes. This site can be very frustrating sometimes as you watch your own stories languish while generic futa clopfic #28509 hits the feature list and scores a 1000 likes. It can also be frustrating to not get feedback; to write 10,000 words and then get only a handful or less of comments.
I'm well aware these are common complaints on site, but I really wish they'd revamp their feature and scoring system to make it so more stories can be listed and get their place in the sun. It's too heavily weighted right now towards new hit stories, of which there are very few. If you don't catch the initial wave, its very hard to get popular. Updated existing stories only get to feature for no more than an hour or two as long as nothing more popular is ahead of them, and then it looks like a 10:1 like:dislike threshold is the minimum to qualify for featuring on story updates. I'm fortunate that three of my stories have qualified, and the fourth... well, TLaTU garners hate just for its subject and can never feature despite its high quality; all I can do is rack up one or two likes a week on it and try to preserve its 4:1 ratio.
Still, a lot of it's on me. As I'm sure everybody is well aware, I don't write 'safe' stories. I always push the envelope in everything I do, whether it's a highly expanded and controversial novelization of a highly popular youtube series or revamping of a Call of Duty crossover. Whether it's pulling off the unlikeliest ship imaginable or a clopfic written in the form of a series of magazine articles; whether it's a war epic based on a G1 pony or an alternate and very adult take on the climactic scene of The Friendship Games. I could churn out 2000-word feature bait stories, but that's not my way. I write to challenge myself, to prove such difficult subjects can be done, and above all else, because I want to do them. Unfortunately, the cost you pay for that is lower interest and more downvotes where people do so based on subject matter alone and don't even bother to read your stuff.
I'm under no illusions of the headwinds I face, but I also know I'm fortunate in many ways. With patience and peserverence my stories have become at least modest successess in spite of their subject matter; I've got a bullpen full of prereaders and good writers I work with, and I've even had people tell me I could turn my works into actual books. I'm also an unquestionably good editor, able to improve most things I touch. I guess I'm a bit frustrated because I can't seem to parley any of that into more.
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Understand, I'm not saying I'm losing my writing passion; far from it. I want to finish Five Star Service, I want to finish The Lawyer and The Unicorn, and I very much I want to get back to writing Rise of Firefly. I want to resume to writing my next novel, I want to keep my promises regarding writing bonus chapters on UtM, and I'd love to write the new stories I mentioned up top. The problem is, no matter how much I may want something, I've got only go so much time, energy, and imagination, and muses are notoriously fickle things. To be sure, I've been incredibly prolific the last couple years even going back to Turnabout Storm, and I make it a point to always go for quality over quantity in my works--that's why I have four long stories and not fourteen short ones.
I guess in the end, I'd like a little more recognition for my existing works. So among other things, I'm thinking of crossposting my stuff on fanfiction.net, and opening a Patreon account. Doesn't feel like I've got enough followers to make that viable, but I guess I'd like to try. Pretty much all my works are book-length at this point; I could make an argument for trying to make actual novels out of them to sell as well. At less than 250 likes for each, however, it's hard to justify the expense.
Enough rambling. So what's ahead? Two new chapters for Raven Regios' Call of Duty: Equestrian Warfare story, followed by a bonus chapter on Unleash the Magic. Past that... probably Firefly. The other problem is that I don't have as much writing time as I used to since I can't do so from work any longer. No joke, that was good for about ten hours of writing a week, depending on my workload. But when you work for a bank, you can expect everything you do to be audited.
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So my bottom line is, please bear with me, folks. I'm going to get everything done, and please be patient with me. I want to write and turn out good stuff. Thanks for following me, thanks for liking my stories, and above all else, thanks for the feedback and friendship I've gotten through them. And isn't that last what this community is all about? 
The Box is indeed a very sticky situation. Regardless of that, I'm glad to hear that you are undeterred and I shall be able to continue reading.
You need to me to ask Fluttershy to bring Harry here? He's a bear.
4274513 The feature box is amazing for new stories, allowing new stories to ride the wave to untold glory. For an existing story it's the cross of Christ bearing down on you, waiting for you to stumble while the Romans lash you with downvotes aplenty and weeping widows stand-by helplessly without leaving so much as a comment as you struggle on towards ultimate irrelevance.
Firesight is correct about DVs; they are simply too punishing to a story's standing.
It's very unfortunate I agree, but in part that says a lot about the userbase (and seriously, why the fuck do these people like chicks with a penis attached?)
From what one author told me, fanfiction.net has a lot more views than FiMFic simply due to the differences in size between the sites.
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Never apply logic to a fetish. You just end up spinning your tires and winding up deeper in the intellectual rut you've carved out.
Honestly, Futa isn't as much an overused fetish as, say... Human Male on Female Pony... the black man/white woman combo of the MLP porn community. Indeed, I've only managed to track down a single futa fic that's managed to break the 1000 likes barrier.
Ever want a fic to break 500 likes, write human x anthro. Just my two cents.