The Kindness Bench for SimLit Writers - For All Games!

"friendsfan367;14915342" wrote:

"Rainydayz179;14910106" wrote:
@BabyDollAnne I know exactly how you feel. I swear people must just roll their eyes every time I start something new because I do it so often. I usually start off saying yet another challenge. Do you think that your failure to complete any of them is due to feeling that nobody is reading it?

if people roll there eyes everytime i start again they might be cross eyed by now.i'ii tell you what i say about writing. if you love the story that will show then your readers will love it too.

i was trying to be encouraging not funny.

"friendsfan367;14915361" wrote:

"friendsfan367;14915342" wrote:

"Rainydayz179;14910106" wrote:
@BabyDollAnne I know exactly how you feel. I swear people must just roll their eyes every time I start something new because I do it so often. I usually start off saying yet another challenge. Do you think that your failure to complete any of them is due to feeling that nobody is reading it?

if people roll there eyes everytime i start again they might be cross eyed by now.i'ii tell you what i say about writing. if you love the story that will show then your readers will love it too.

i was trying to be encouraging not funny.

You were encouraging! I get excited every time you start over. I bet that Noel and Lauren do, too! :)

@CathyTea @ValoisFulcanelli: Thanks for being voices of reason. ;)

First, I'm totally stalling on this reply by watching JonTron instead. So nothing has changed yet. :p

The whole "hummingbird" thing does describe my life-long (so far) journey with writing. More that I've been on-and-off with it as a main passion, and I often left it for other things, only to come back with some knowledge/experience elsewhere. I probably would have been far more mundane of a writer if I didn't stop it in middle and high school to watch cartoons, listen to and obsess over heavy metal, and draw gory things inspired by the worst of it. (But hopefully I get out of this slump by a better way than "someone close to me dies and I give up everything but writing to grieve". Because that was terrible, even if it did give me an idea that may or may not have morphed into parts of Eight Cicadas)

And I am enjoying this weird slow period of my life...I think. One of the problems is that I get plenty of phone calls from recruiters and I don't want to immerse myself too deeply in anything, lest I miss something important.

There are two very different responses to #2, so:

@CathyTea: Your enthusiasm is welcome. I'm right in-between "I have a clear and direct vision for everything that could possibly happen" and "I think of entire arcs right before I write them". And yeah, plenty of professionals leave glaring plot holes and inconsistencies in work they publicly release. That's why we can have entire blogs and shows devoted to tearing apart bad books and bad movies and other bad media. ;) So I'm far from the first to be inconsistent, but yay for perfectionism! I have to be the best!! Even in something that is just an extension of my weirdest hobby. :p

At least you're supportive.

@ValoisFulcanelli: Funny enough, I was considering the horribly bizarre family scenario where her legal dad was also her biological grandpa. It would lead to the natural series of events of her biological father impregnating his husband's bio-daughter (totally possible when every party involved is immortal and un-aging and pretty open-minded), and it'd only be a little more creepy than the other relationships made out of screwing in-laws and non-blood family. :p

The inconsistencies with my general lore might be more of a problem, but I'll see what happens. Maybe I can write it in. I have a feeling that my narrator, while an immortal alien hybrid, is probably about as flighty and fickle and forgetful as I am. :p

*takes a seat*

I've been trying to figure out how to deal emotionally with living on a planet controlled by a species that regularly engages in atrocities and that doesn't seem to be able to make rational collective decisions to solve its problems for...well, I guess my whole life.

And of course that struggle was thrown into sharp relief this week.

So I guess my question is - does my work have meaning? Do my Sims stories contribute anything good and decent to the world? Am I helping somehow, adding some small little bit of goodness or beauty?

"Rainydayz179;14909909" wrote:
*Sits down on the bench*

I keep typing things out and then deleting them. I'm not sure how to explain. What I want to know is if anyone else builds up things in their heads... and then gets terribly discouraged when nobody else shares your enthusiasm?

I always seem to do this to myself. I'll get so excited about a new story or a post that I worked really hard on or in this case the end of the first generation of my legacy. Then when I don't get a response or not the response I had expected I get discouraged and depressed.

Any advice is welcome if you think of anything but mostly I just feel like I'm the only one that does this.

I think @MedleyMisty and @InfraGreen (and really everyone because I wrote this and then read through more responses and should've read all the way through) answered this really well. I get discouraged too when no one seems to be noticing my Sims or caring about them the way I do. I wonder if I'm doing it wrong or if my voice is just floating away into the chaotic traffic of the world wide web. I try to remind myself that this is something I love and enjoy doing. W

ould I do it if no one read? Yes because I wrote for over a year before I got my first comment. One of the things I do is write post-it notes of encouragement to myself, reminding myself why I write, and then I stick this near my computer.

@CathyTea shared a fabulous article awhile back in another forums thread written by Tara Mohr and I highlighted and made a sticky note of this quote to help me when I'm feeling discouraged:

The reason to write is because you're a woman who loves to write.

(Substitute man if you're a male reading this.)

I think I've come to realize no one will love Kass the way I do because she's my creation, my baby. But others can come to appreciate her and connect with her, and that is my hope. In the meantime, hang in there. Like someone else said, just because people don't comment doesn't mean they aren't reading/appreciating.

"AdamsEve1231;14917101" wrote:

"Rainydayz179;14909909" wrote:
*Sits down on the bench*

I keep typing things out and then deleting them. I'm not sure how to explain. What I want to know is if anyone else builds up things in their heads... and then gets terribly discouraged when nobody else shares your enthusiasm?

I always seem to do this to myself. I'll get so excited about a new story or a post that I worked really hard on or in this case the end of the first generation of my legacy. Then when I don't get a response or not the response I had expected I get discouraged and depressed.

Any advice is welcome if you think of anything but mostly I just feel like I'm the only one that does this.

I think @MedleyMisty and @InfraGreen answered this really well. I get discouraged too when no one seems to be noticing my Sims or caring about them the way I do. I wonder if I'm doing it wrong or if my voice is just floating away into the chaotic traffic of the world wide web. I try to remind myself that this is something I love and enjoy doing. W

ould I do it if no one read? Yes because I wrote for over a year before I got my first comment. One of the things I do is write post-it notes of encouragement to myself, reminding myself why I write, and then I stick this near my computer.

@CathyTea shared a fabulous article awhile back in another forums thread written by Tara Mohr and I highlighted and made a sticky note of this quote to help me when I'm feeling discouraged:

The reason to write is because you're a woman who loves to write.

(Substitute man if you're a male reading this.)

I think I've come to realize no one will love Kass the way I do because she's my creation, my baby. But others can come to appreciate her and connect with her, and that is my hope. In the meantime, hang in there. Like someone else said, just because people don't comment doesn't mean they aren't reading/appreciating.

i plan to read this weekend.my list is longer than my time.

@BabyDollAnne I hear ya on the whole start a new story thing and millions of ideas. I've made a commitment to 2 stories right now, with my priority being the first one - Kass's. I make a point specifically with the second one to write and post pretty quickly with little editing. Kass's story on the other hand I edit and plan and plot a lot so it's more time consuming but I can balance this with a less intensive story.

I try to keep a list of all my story ideas, character ideas, and random stray plots in case I want to come back to it later. I think the important thing is not to overwhelm yourself by over-committing and not to underwhelm yourself by never committing. Find something that works for you and stick to it. It helps to have the community here to encourage and motivate you when you need it.

@rednenemon Don't delete your blog. Don't feel defeated. I know I'm still fairly new at reading your story, but I'm enjoying what I've read and I wouldn't want you to give up just like I'd hope if I was wanting to give up someone would give me a confidence boost. I think it's really neat that you're choosing a non-traditional path and writing a Sims story without pictures. It definitely keeps me focused on the writing. In fact, this is a little bit of a secret in a way, I guess, but I'm sharing anyhow. I often will read the prose first, then go back and look at the pictures because I'm so in tune with prose. This is a compliment to you btw because I can just read the prose without worrying about pictures and that makes me appreciate the story. (Not to say to everyone else, I don't look at pictures because I do; I just have a tendency to read through once and peruse the pictures on the second read through).

I also will add I have a special spot for the Rackets family because I'm currently writing through the Rackets in my CFT. I enjoy reading what others come up with, even though we all write about the same premades, we all have our own unique take and spin on them. This is the beauty of creativity and kind-of like what I was saying on another forums page - every story is just a combination of 26 different letters (I think I saw this floating on Pinterest) and what makes us unique (this is my add-in to that) is how we choose to formulate those letters.

Someone once told me to keep everything even if you don't via the blog because you can see where you came from and that helps you to see where you're going, to learn from your mistakes, and to grow as a writer. Sometimes I'll delete entire sections of my stories and save them in a file for later, in case, I come back someday and have a completely new idea about how to resurrect the text. For example, my opening scene with Kass and her boss, Brendon Shore in 2.1 was supposed to happen between Kass and Gage originally (the first love interest). For anyone who's read my work, they'd know this would be a completely different scene.

Here's the original text: (this segment would have originally been between ch 6-7 in KCLKF)


Here's what's actually currently posted on the blog.


Completely different scene. Completely different dynamics. I like the second one better and I'm glad I didn't pitch it after I deleted this segment from the first story because it worked out better in story 2.

I hope this helps and isn't just me being rambly again. Sending *hugs* and hoping you know there are people who love your story. :)

"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. :)

Thank you. <3 I needed this today.

"Rainydayz179;14911456" wrote:

"MedleyMisty;14911357" wrote:
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.

Your post was very long and inspirational but this is the part that resonated the most with me. As someone with severe social anxiety it took me a long time to start reaching out to others here on the forums. One of the first was @CathyTea and she was so nice to me that it gave me the courage to interact more. My participation on the threads I follow and the amount I comment on stories I read are directly connected to my mood at the time.

I will admit that some writers intimidate me and they usually get so many comments on their posts already that I figure they don't need mine.

I've heard that you should write about what you know personally so I'm trying to add things like anxiety into my stories. It's my hope that someone will read it and either get an understanding of what it's like for others or recognize it in themselves.

I really resonated with this too. I struggle with anxiety and depression and this is definitely tied to my creativity and imagination when I'm feeling underappreciated. I too sometimes feel intimidated by writers who have a gazillion comments and wonder why they'd want to hear from me, but I do it anyway because I know how I love to get feedback and so I try to comment on nearly everything I read even if it's just a simple, "I like your story!" or "Great chapter." I think all of us, even those who get a lot of comments, can benefit from lending our voice in appreciation for the art form they just created.