They Can't All Be Winners (or: Wherein The Author Fails To Follow His Own Advice) · 4:54am Jul 6th, 2017
I've had to re-learn some lessons with my latest story. Gimme a sec and I'll explain.
I've been fortunate enough to get to speak about writing at a couple of Pony cons... and just being able to type that sentence is amazing and pretty much disqualifies me from ever getting to complain about anything Pony-related ever. But I want to focus on a specific thing that I can't do without invoking some advice I've given to people, and it relates to something that I think is important no matter where you are as a writer. Though obviously I can't speak to the experience of being either a pro or a "name," so who knows, maybe there comes a point where some of this doesn't apply...
Not every story is destined to get a ton of views. Naturally, this can be cause for frustration and discouragement if you've got one you're really invested in. Some of my advice to people when they've talked about related experiences (and I've had them too!) is to keep their chin up, recall what the story meant to them and what they learned from it, then focus on the next one. I mean, if you produced something you feel is of quality, and especially if you ended up learning from the experience, then doing it was worth it, right?
Right?
Of course there are some practical limits to whether a given story is actually worth it to you personally. Think of it as a cost-benefit analysis of what you get out of the experience of writing, weighed against what the story took from you to get it done. And don't just think in terms of time to write and edit it, but all the thought and emotion it took while spinning around in your head as you worked on it as well. Or, let's say if you pulled an ill-advised all-nighter to write something against a deadline... you'd probably want that thing to make some waves, right?
So here's the thing: another piece of advice I've given people--maybe even the key piece of advice I'd give to anyone--is to work with one or more prereaders/editors/decent human beings to help make sure your story is cleaned-up and looking its best prior to posting it. But the reason this is Thing Numero Uno isn't necessarily related to improving the story itself; the fact is that you're never going to get a story to be completely perfect. No, it's actually about improving your own sense of confidence in what you've written. Go back to that cost-benefit analysis metaphor: regardless of whether your story meets the tragic end of an undiscovered gem, or whether it tears up the feature box, at least you go into it knowing where you stand, which (at least for me) helps tip the scales toward "benefit" regardless of how it performs.
I would argue that the biggest bummer isn't when you write a Good Thing and get Bad Results; I would argue that it comes when you're pretty sure that what you've got is good, but you're not sure-sure, and you release it to zero fanfare, and then you didn't get to learn as much. Even if you know your story isn't exactly God's gift to pony fanfiction, at least you know and can choose to release it, or rewrite it, or scrap it altogether. And on the flip side, if you know that your prereaders are telling you that you're on the cusp of releasing something truly worthwhile, then that feeling can help sustain you if the story only makes a tiny splash instead of the big one you were hoping for.
Now sure, you might write a crappy first draft and get told by your editor (though perhaps not in as many words, or perhaps indeed exactly this way, depending on who you work with) that the draft is crap. But if they're worth working with, they'll give you details about things that worked and things that didn't and various typos. Of course, if you know you're working with someone good, and if they tell you that something you wrote is good, you might get a kick of feeling like you nailed it! And all of this is good. I mean, ultimately everyone has their own reasons for writing, and their own set of things they're looking to get out of the experience, but I believe that getting good prereader feedback is a helpful way to insulate the experience (and benefits) of writing from the size of the specific audience.
To bring it full circle, I didn't go through that full process with Looking for Trouble: A Postapocalyptic Cowboy Noir. I absolutely got some good feedback on the rough draft from fellow Writeoff participants, but I opted to rush the final draft so I could make the deadline for Jake The Army Guy's contest instead of taking the time to secure a prereader to help confirm the edits I made did the trick. I think it's good; heck, I'd ask anyone sitting on the fence to read the thing, as it's not super-long and it's probably one of the more unique romance/mystery stories on here. But I didn't get someone to confirm that it's good through the prereading process. And that's ultimately the hardest thing about seeing the story sit there with low views: because I wonder what else I could've done for it.
Tl;dr: Work with prereaders, not just to improve story quality, but to improve your own understanding of how well the story conveys what you wanted it to.
...So does this sound right to you guys? Any thoughts (or thrown fruit) to follow it up? 
...
Personally, I just didn't read it because it didn't look like the kind of thing I'd be interested in. Just not a big noir guy, really.
I've always found that the key element of working with beta readers and editors is indeed the refinement of your own craft, but also the simple fact that they don't look at the world like you do. No matter how good or how bad you think your story may be, an outside perspective is always helpful. You may think a story needs to be scrapped, but there's actually some really good content in there that'll work wonderfully in the next fic. Or you could have a totally awesome story that could be even more awesome by improving a character's voice!
It's all about getting as many perspectives as possible!
In the end though, write for yourself first. Yeah, taking shortcuts and rushing to the end never feels good, because you're always going to wonder if it could have been better. But that's the catch with deadlines. Everyone who did both WriteOff and Contest was in the same boat, really (Frankly, I was vaguely annoyed I made the finals because I just wanted to publish the damn thing and be done with it!). Either way, I think you told a good story. It's unique, the tone is perfect and... well, I'm a sucker for anything with a good Sunset.
Even if I weren't obligated to read the story for judging purposes, it would still be on my Read Later list. The premise sounds fascinating and it has Best Human.
4593585
I totally get it. I'm sure there's a lot that could be written about genres and audience size and stuff like that. I remember that ocalhoun was doing some work on that a couple years ago, and I was curious to learn more. Seems like he stopped at some point, though.
4593595
Thank you for the encouragement, and I agree with what you're saying about the writing process and feedback. Some of the best moments in my stories came directly out of prereader suggestions about moments that I thought were good but that could've been better; and in some cases, I've had things I wasn't sure about that people told me were good and should be tweaked and emphasized.
I was flabbergasted at the number of stories that made it into both Writeoff finals and Jake's contest--that must've been even harder than what I ended up dealing with, since there was so little time after finals to get them posted.
In the end, yes I was hoping this would get a bit more notice, but it feels good knowing I at least reached a few people.
4593692
I hope you enjoy it when you get that far! It's definitely different and a bit experimental, but a few people have liked it at any rate.
I liked it. Just needed a tiny bit of polish methinks. It's just that some genres don't fall into the "popular" category.
4593831
Thanks man. It's always an adventure, thinking up new stuff to write. Seems like all I've got these days are weird obscure ideas, though. Maybe I should do a community poll or something about what an actual popular story idea would look like. You know, so I could then proceed to do something totally off-the-wall with it.
4594447
Don't just write what'll get views. Otherwise you're going to have to start writing clop.
4594468
No no no, the whole point would be to skewer whatever it is.
...Which is clop, eh? I was guessing it would be one specific ship or another these days. Oh well, I might have to look for something else to parody (or at least to take in a completely off-the-wall direction)...
4594486
Which is clop?
That was rhetorical, I hope, cause I'm not explaining.
We still haven't acted on the prompts we gave each other forever ago.
4594505
It's mostly rhetorical. I forget easily and don't always notice stuff. Especially if I would miss it with my mature filter.
I don't even remember the prompts, I'm sad to say. I'm probably due for a reminder!
4594608
I'll pm.