"MedleyMisty;14911357" wrote:
@Rainydayz179 I know. I used to get really angsty about it. I still do a bit sometimes, like when I think I have come up with a lovely image and words that I tried my best to make beautiful, and all I get is some likes on Tumblr.
The change in your blog probably has a lot to do with it. It'll take time to build up a readership again.
The internet audience is very fickle, and the majority of them are likely to just leave if you move blogs or if you slow down on updates or whatever. It takes time to find the small core of readers who'll stick with you through all that kind of stuff, but they are out there. There's not a whole lot of them, though.
I think...like we put our souls into our work, and we love it so much, and we want other people to join in that love with us. But honestly the majority of people on the internet aren't here for that. They're here for custom content, or for constant story updates, and I think that a lot of them don't really see the people who create the content they consume as actual people. Also if they aren't content creators themselves, they don't know the amount of work that goes into it. Like the person who commented on Valley once to tell me that she didn't understand why I didn't update more frequently until she started her own story and saw how much work it was. And mind you at the time I was updating once a week.
And then, even of the ones who do see us as human and who do appreciate the work that goes into what we give them, there are a lot of insecure and shy and anxious people out there who believe that we don't want to hear from them, that they'll be bothering us, who are worried that we'll make fun of their comments. And then of course on our side we interpret their silence as not caring, as meaning that whatever we did wasn't good enough, so it's just a giant circle of angst and anxiety.
And then add to all that the pressure from the people who tell those of us who are honest about wanting feedback that we should just write for ourselves and never care if anyone reads it, and that it's wrong and pathetic to worry about stats and comments. It's a recipe for misery.
The only way I've found to get out of that circle is boundaries, and a more accurate assessment of myself and my work and the actual motivations and beliefs of other people. I had to convince my brain that what I write is actually pretty darn good, and that it has worth, no matter how many views and comments it gets. I had to learn a lot about other people, and that they had all sorts of reasons for not commenting or for not reading in the first place that had nothing to do with either me as a person or my work, and that I had absolutely no control over their reactions.
You can work your fingers to the bone to produce great art, and people will still not care and not comment for all sorts of reasons.
Also, something I brought up in the Art of Sims Storytelling thread may be helpful here. Dunning-Kruger. People who are incompetent in a field generally can't recognize competence in that field, whether their own or other people's. Also, the more competent you become in a field, the more you can see where you fall short of what's possible, and the more you doubt yourself.
So what that means for us is that people who aren't competent in writing and storytelling are probably not going to have discerning tastes in Sims stories, and they aren't going to be able to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff, and that therefore you shouldn't judge your work by what they say about it and whether or not they read it. And also, if you have doubts about the quality of your work, that is a pretty good sign that your quality is on the higher end of the spectrum and that you're learning and improving and becoming more competent.
Like Eminem says in the song Lighters, when you're at the top of your game the other game players are likely not going to feel you. :)
