#HAAAHAHA fUCk.. here I was wondering how I could write certain elements of Xan's backstory so well

[sanerontheinside]

sometimes i feel guilty at how many hits i end up giving a fic while i read?? especially the ones with super long chapters, like, ill be reading on the pc and then get up make tea and keep reading on the tablet, or have to go to school so i open it on the phone to read on the bus, or i leave something open to read later and forget and read it the day after, or i have to go to sleep in the middle of a chapter, and all of these are separate hits im gonna end up leaving one kudos on

Aww man you’re right, that sucks, now you’ve reminded me 😆  shit

I really do that all the time. I’ve reread various chapters or parts of favourite fics (ReEntry in particular) any crazy number of times, and I keep going back to RE to check things (it’s canon, brain so declared, I don’t make the rules). 

Honestly, in that respect, 10% feels like a very respectable engagement ratio. That’s your first-read, kneejerk kudos count right there. Not bad. There’s no real way to tell how many people come back to your work unless they comment something like ‘rereading!’. That would probably be a nice feeling. Personally, I feel like that would be a very valuable quantity, if such a thing could be measured (definitely not possible tho, I mean my phone browser keeps signing me out). I’d love to know that were my fic a book it would have been creased to falling apart by now. 

With my fic, personally I’m one of the more oblivious people, as far as statistics go. I’d like to emphasise, that’s not meant to a brag. I’m extremely oblivious about any regard my fic gets, largely because… I’ve been very often told that my writing is a waste of time, time I should have spent studying, etc. 

Leave out the fanfiction part of it. That would be even worse. (’If you’re good enough to write, why waste it on someone else’s ideas? write your own original fic!’) 

Weirdly enough, I’ve never been told I’m bad at it (almost the opposite, and I say almost because praise isn’t a thing we do in the saner household). But I have been told, time and again, that I should have my priorities straight, and if I really want what I claim to want, I shouldn’t be splitting myself between two pursuits. So: not a brag, just brain weasels. I’ve learned to love writing; I’ve learned not to feel guilty about writing fanfiction, for that matter. There are very many people I will never mention it to, nonetheless. Certainly not those largely responsible for this blindspot’s existence. 

Thus, the result: at the beginning, it felt important to see that people were reading it. But I started on ffnet (as far as fandom is concerned, I am a youngling, yes). Now, as some people around here probably know, ffnet is a really shitty place to see meaningful stats. They tried to do that thing that youtube did so much better, the viewing tracker for your videos that shows not only how many people watched and the distribution curve and location, but also how many watched your video all the way through. 

ffnet activity monitoring was… bleh. Their software engineers could not possibly compete with youtube. You’d have people reading chapter 16 when 12-15 have 0 hits. I mean, it’s not impossible, but chances are it’s also bullshit. I got fed up trying to extract any meaningful conclusions from that data. 

And then, it didn’t really matter. Ultimately, the project I was working on caught fire all on its own. Now it’s a potential original work I could rewrite into something pretty awesome. I don’t really… I think I stopped at the right time. 

What is an indicator on ffnet is probably how many people follow your story, or you, the author. That was nice. These days it’s just unsettling, when you get an email from FanFiction.Net that informs you someone new is following a work you could probably have called abandoned by now, and fuck, did you forget the password? Probably. I think the last time I posted there was a couple years ago? I freaked out badly about a certain part that I’d written, and what it meant about my mental state at the time. 

But I digress: the first time I’d received more than 1 comment to a story or a chapter, or really to the sum total of my posted works—was on ao3, on the account I officially got… a… year? ago?

OMIGOD. 6/10/16. A YEAR. fuuuuuuuck meeeeeeeee…

Commenting is very valuable for those who started out posting their fic on forums. Forums have much more of a community feel. Comments meant so much more than a kudos count would, or the number of hits. My mom was posting her work on a forum specifically designed by and for Russian-language authors. I know she met, exchanged emails with, occasionally called some people on that forum. I’ve not actually had that opportunity on ao3, only with people I’ve met here on the hellsite. 

Now, of course, if I could get into the habit of commenting, that really would be nice, fuckdammit. 

But for me, the truth is, I don’t know what a respectable kudos count or comment number is. Anything is good. Anything is better than my own personal situation IRL, anyway. I share fic with my friends and they’re always there to tell me it’s good writing if only I could actually believe them. I do everything in my power to make damn certain my parents—my mother, particularly, who is (was, I guess?) herself a brilliant writer—never read it. 

My mother, whom I’ve always seen as that judge I wanted to impress. My mother, with whom I’ve co-written things with fantastic results. My mother, whose brain I really fucking envy whenever we do accidentally fall into a conversation about writing, ideas, or whatever. Whose brain I’ve never been able to predict. 

The same person who can make my writing seem… insipid, with a single word, or a facial expression, all without ever meaning to. The same woman who—the moment certain departments got their heads out of certain orifices and found her applications and files and everything and gave her a work permit—shut off that part of her brain that writes. 

And, fuck, you know how many times my depressed ass, incapable of doing much beyond writing, wished I could do that? Just stop? Just to have time (during which, let’s face it, I could have increased productivity by all of 2-5%—yeah, big win.)

You see the issue, right? 

To be blunt: no amount of positive commenting and kudos is going to fix my damn problems 😂  

uuugh, oh gods… isn’t that fucked up. 

Aaaanyway, apparently we needed to unload a heck of a lot of unnecessary personal shit. Sorry about that.