[ SECRET POST #2917 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2917 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #417.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, you could remind yourself of a few things:

1) Quality is not a guarantee of popularity
2) But popularity is in itself a measure of success

The first is to reassure you that your writing is worth pursuing and improving, because everyone's writing has room for improvement no matter good the author thinks it is.* The second is to remind yourself that just because lesser quality fics are more popular doesn't mean they're crap, it means they've connected with a larger audience in a way that your fics have not, which is worth studying, not scorning.


* A caution, though. I'm very wary of writers who think their work is hot shit because IME, that usually means the author lacks objectivity or perspective of their own writing. Very few amazing writers I've seen think their writing is amazing, most of them question themselves all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

"...it means they've connected with a larger audience in a way that your fics have not, which is worth studying, not scorning."

That's rarely something a writer has any control over though, which is what makes it so frustrating.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

Agreed. Factors like the author's personality, their overall presence or "importance" in fandom before their fics gained a following, those aren't going to be things you can emulate. Sometimes if you miss the zeitgeist then there's nothing you can do about it except suck it up.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I didn't say "emulate", though. It's true that someone else's success can be very individual and not able to be replicated. But... that doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it.

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps, but learning that a lot of this stuff is reliant on luck and randomness isn't especially helpful, unless you frame it in the context of realizing that while you have every control over the work you create, you have very little control over how your work is received and you shouldn't worry about it so much.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

So what's the lesson? Conform to the shallowest, most dumbed-down mass-appeal juggernaut ship OOC smutfic if you want more attention?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know about that. It's not completely out of a writer's control, but first they have to figure out WHY people are connecting to a certain piece of work and not others. I'll grant you, that's really hard because often the readers aren't able to put their finger on it, either. But I don't buy the idea that connecting to your audience is something you can't influence at all. If that were true, the popularity of, well, anything would be a lot more random than it is.

[(Anonymous)]

The popularity of a lot of things (fandom and otherwise) IS pretty random though. That's how mass-market, appeal to the lowest-common-denominator to snare the widest audience media works.

At the end of the day, all you can control is the work/product you create. You can control your skill levels, you can control the form your work takes. Frankly, once you release it into the wild then you have zero control over how its received.

[(Anonymous)]

You don't have any control over how it's received, but you do have control over certain content, and you do have control over marketing. You can increase the likelihood of a story "succeeding" by including aspects that appeal to the target demographic and by promoting it well.

The idea that you have absolutely no control whatsoever is silly. Luck will always be a factor, but it's not the only factor.

[(Anonymous)]

Uh, yes, that's what I said?

You can control your product, be it the content/genre/skill level of the creator/target market/advertising etc.

None of that, however guarantees you jack. Marketing strategies flop all the time, however well planned they might be. Demographics flip on a dime if e.g. the market becomes saturated in the meantime. And much as you may want to believe otherwise -- or as much as some promotional company tries to convince you to get you to splash out on ad campaigns -- none of that is in the authors hands.

All a creator can do is create the best product they are capable of creating. It might be too existential for you to handle but beyond that you're deluding yourself if you think it's anything more than the fickle whims of your audience and/or the people trying to cash in on your work.

[(Anonymous)]

Very few amazing writers I've seen think their writing is amazing, most of them question themselves all the time.

Seconding that.

The best artists of any sort are always pushing themselves further, and can see their own faults. However, they also have to have had enough self-confidence to have create anything in the first place, and not abandon it partway because of wracking self-doubt.

It's a tricky balancing act.