Free!

I think a lot about who I am to other people in the world–particular who I am to strangers as a mere concept in their lives.

Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”

And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.

Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.

“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”

They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”

And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.

And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.

I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.

Amazing.

I’M LAUGHING!!! THEY DIDN’T EVEN ASK WHO I AM.

why write a story if no one's going to read it?

Sometimes you don't want to share a story with others. Sometimes you do want to share it, but no one clicks on the title. So why bother writing it down if the only person you can guarantee will read it is you?

i know this has been said to death on here but allow me a moment of earnesty when i say people care about you. people you don’t even know care about you. i have elderly customers that call at the same time every night and my whole team remembers them by name. there’s an old man who calls and tells me four knock-knock jokes every time i talk to him, and i worry when he sounds sick and i’m relieved when he sounds better the next week. there’s a woman who calls to balance her accounts every other night and i know her dog’s name even though she never remembers mine. when i drive home in the morning there is always a man walking down the sidewalk in the same place and i wonder where he is when i don’t see him. the cashier you see at your local gas station probably remembers you. your bus driver remembers you. your neighbors remember you.

you know that expression, "dance like no one is watching you?"

try writing like no one is going to read it

it's easier to let yourself go and just enjoy the process of creation when you aren't also playing 6 dimensional chess with your insecurities and anxieties

write because you have fun writing and if you never post it anywhere that's totally fine because you enjoyed your time with the process

My mantras include:

I'm a big advocate of letting your brain free on the page. It is far better to write something messy and unpublishable than spending your time sadly thinking about what you could write but you can't because of the things you have to write.

Because here's a shocker: you don't have to write anything.

What will happen if you're late? You apologise, and your readers will consume it anyway with joy. Let go of that guilt, for not working on your "current project". It will kill your passion for writing, and it will make it a chore.

Don't let yourself regret not writing it, just write it!

how to have a healthier relationship with your stats page

1. Understand what stats can tell you - and what they can’t

AO3 stats tell you whether or not another user clicked something. That’s it. Hits tell you whether a user clicked the title of your fic. Kudos tell you that a user clicked the little ❤ at the bottom of the page. Comments tell you that a user typed something into a box and then hit the comment button. 

Stats do not tell you why a person did any of those things. They also don’t tell you why a person didn’t do them. You know why you do those things yourself, but there are many types of people in the world and we all have our reasons why we do things. You can’t assume that every other user of AO3 uses the site the same way you do. 

Stats are not a reliable way to find out if you’re good at writing. They’re not a way to tell if you are loved. They have nothing to do with the quality of your work or your worth as a person.

2. Don’t compare yourself to others - or yourself

Because stats are not a reliable way to judge quality or skill or the effort you put into a story, comparing your stats against another author will also not tell you which of you is the “better” author or which of you has a “better” story. They can tell you which story was more popular, but popularity itself has very little to do with skill or quality. 

This is also true of your own work. Chances are very real that the story you’re most proud of is not the story with the best stats. Don’t let one story’s relative success or failure affect how you feel about another’s. 

3. Focus on things you can control instead of things you can’t

Once you’ve posted your story, the reaction to it is out of your control. It will get however many hits, kudos, and comments other people decide to give it and you can’t do much about that at all. 

What you can control, however, is the work you put into the story before you post it. Celebrate statistics like word count or time spent writing or the number of WIP you’ve managed to finish. Those are all numbers that are in your control, that you have the power to alter and affect. 

Find something in every story that makes you happy. It doesn’t have to be the whole fic. It could be one particular characterization, a scene, or a line. Maybe you wrote a particularly funny joke or a really moving description or a hot love scene. 

Highlighting positive emotions and being proud of your own work will make you less reliant on the opinions of other people. You’ll develop more confidence, and that will help you avoid the stats spiral in the future. Finding motivations inside of yourself is much more reliable than getting motivation from people who might or might not continue to provide it.

4. If you can’t ignore stats, avoid them

The first time I had an unhealthy relationship with my stats page, I ended up quitting fic entirely for about a year. I still wrote, I just didn’t post anything on AO3. I couldn’t trust myself not to focus on the numbers and make myself crazy, and so I didn’t allow myself to look at them at all. 

The second time I found myself starting down the stats spiral, I knew the signs and I was able to pull myself out of it. I stopped looking at my stats page, but I was able to continue posting work. I still refreshed the page for the first day to see the hits/kudos/comments but after that first day I only returned to the fic in order to post a new chapter or answer another comment. 

There are tools you can use to help you avoid stats. This AO3 skin hides stats entirely. This code hides hits. Here’s one for hiding kudos with additional instructions on how to hide any stats you choose. 

5. Be your own cheerleader

When it comes right down to it, the reason why we focus in on stats is because we’re looking for reassurance. We want to know for sure whether we’re a good writer or not. Unfortunately, our stats are never going to tell us that. 

A lot of us are also told by others that being proud of something we’ve done or liking something that we’ve created is boastful or bragging or other negative personality traits. But there’s a difference between bragging about how good you are and acknowledging your own skills. 

Give yourself permission to like your own work. You might never get that permission from someone else, so you need to take that on yourself. 

Start talking to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend of yours who was working on a fic or a piece of art or doing anything else that requires time and skill. You wouldn’t tear them down, so don’t tear yourself down. Build yourself up. That positive self-talk can be difficult at first, but it’s a habit that pays off over time. 

6. Know that I’m proud of you

It takes courage and strength and determination to have an idea and then to act on it. It’s easy to think. It’s a lot harder to write things down. No matter whether you post your story online or you keep it to yourself. No matter whether you get a thousand hits or a dozen. You’re still amazing, and I’m so glad you took that leap ❤

As a reader, I don't tend to find comment requests in end notes "whiny" or ungrateful. They don't usually come across as compliment fishing or guilt tripping either. I have seen requests that were any or all of the above, though.

I think a lot of what separates the two types of requests is an acknowledgement of why the request is being made. Which does require you understand what you're actually looking for when you ask for comments.

A couple of examples:

Problem: A lot of times when I'm disappointed over a lack of comments, it's because I want to know if people caught a thing I did. (Foreshadowing, reference, etc)

Solution: in the next chapter's note, mention that there's a thing and I'd love to hear if anyone caught it. I don't have to specify what the thing is—just where it is

Problem: a lot of long WIPs end up getting comment requests in the end notes bc keeping that motivation going is hard

Solution: ask readers to confirm their interest in you continuing, or drop motivation comments when they think of the WIP

(Seriously, as a reader these types of comment requests I always fill. I don't have to feel bad if all I have time/energy for is 'looking forward to the next ch' bc they literally asked for it)

Problem: you want confirmation your writing's good

Solution: tell folks you'd appreciate hearing any positives re your writing—even just an "extra kudos". whether you say you'd appreciate the love in your inbox to fight self-deprecation, or that you want to hear what people enjoy, doesn't really matter.

Re talking about it

We've all been there.

If you're talking to other writers, no one's gonna think you're whiny for being disappointed in a lack of engagement. (Well. I suppose someone could. I'd imagine they'd have to be very self-centered though)

Talking about it can help you figure out why you want more comments. It can also help you figure out why you're not seeing engagement in other ways. You might find that others have suggestions on how to improve that engagement, or that you suddenly have a reoccurring commenter/hype-person. (I know I'm not the only person out there that makes a note when someone says they're discouraged by a lack of engagement, and makes a point to share and comment on their work for a while after at least)

If you recently moved fandoms, talking to others can also help you put things in perspective. Some fandoms have a really high rate of engagement, others have a low engagement rate. Switching from a high to low engagement fandom absolutely feels like you're getting nothing.

give yourself the gift of reading your own fic. it was literally written just for you.

that whole “make your characters want things” does so much work for you in a story, even if what your characters want is stupid and irrelevant, because how people go about pursuing their desires tells you about them as a person.

do they actually move toward what they desire? how far are they willing to go for it? do they pursue their desires directly or indirectly? do they acquire what they desire through force, trickery, or negotiation? do they tell themselves they aren’t supposed to feel desire and suppress it? does the suppressed desire wither away and die, or does it mutate and grow even stronger? is the initially expressed desire actually an inadequate and poorly translated different desire that they lack language for? does the desire change once the language has been updated, or when new experiences outline the desire more clearly? do they want something else once they have better words for it, or once they know that they definitely don’t want something they thought they wanted before?

how does the world accommodate those desires? what does the world present to your character and in what order to update and clarify their desires? how does your magic system or sci-fi device correspond to those desires and the pursuit of them?

there’s so much good story meat on those bones; you just have to be brave and decisive enough to let characters want specific things instead of letting them float in the current of the plot.

and I loved the responses of “Well, my character is very passive and doesn’t know how to want things, the story is about their process of learning to do that exactly”, because that’s fine, that’s all well and good, but passive people still want things. passive human beings who have been so thoroughly neglected that the articulation of a single desire is beyond them want what their internal sphere of control tells them they are allowed to want. they desire constancy and a lack of conflict. they desire nostalgic artifacts that remind them of prior constancy and lack of conflict. the desire to float is an engineered desire that runs in conflict with the development of a happy healthy human being. Who engineered it? How do you begin to chip away at something like that? How do small, passive desires lead up to that?

Heads up for anyone who didn't already know: popularity doesn't equal quality.

Sometimes popular things are also quality. Sometimes quality things are also popular. But those are two different metrics on two different scales.

What you see as "good" will depend on which scale you value more in any given moment for any particular creation, and in the end neither popularity nor quality are what matters most.

What matters most is your own enjoyment.

THE BOY WHO STOLE THE MOON lostomatos

friendly reminder that a good portion of fandom creators do everything for free and that taking one minute or less to reblog what they post is the least you can do after they have spent hours working insanely hard to make you happy

the most fun thing about being a fic author is when you know what’s supposed to happen but when you go to write it you realise that, for the event to be plausible, you need to add another 2k of development and establish like six extra things before you can even get to the scene you need to write, and by ‘most fun’ I mean fuck everything someone take this fucking story away from me I’m on strike

just because it's a short film doesn't mean it's incomplete and should have a full-length movie adaptation

just because it's an amazing movie that did really well doesn't mean it needs a sequel

just because it's a well loved classic tv show doesn't mean it needs to be remade anew

let stories be exactly the length they are, they don't need to be extended and drawn out and added onto and redone until they're not good anymore. if your story is short but it works that way then it's done. you don't need to add more. knowing when to stop is so important