Worked Up
Okay, so my upload date for 'Mark of a Goddess' is usually Wednesday night around midnight, but when I tried to upload this week, it didn't work. No error message. No note from admin at ff.net telling me that I sucked and was having my priviledges revoked for a week or a month or something. Nothing. So, I sent a ticket to the bug people and asked them what was wrong. They'll look into it when they have a chance.
I also have an account at mediaminer.org on the side, but how to say? MY STORY DOESN'T GET A LOT OF ATTENTION THERE! It has gotten pretty good feedback for that site, but good feedback for mediaminer is like 4 reviews and not per chapter - for the WHOLE story.
Okay, so I set up my forum on ff.net before I went to upload the chapter. And in case you didn't know it, once I set up the topic thread, even though I have administration rights - I still can't remove it. So, people went to the forum and seemed sad that they couldn't read the chapter. Not even very many people acted sad and I caved and told everyone that if they really wanted to read it then they could private message me and I would let them read the chapter - my whole plan being to direct people one by one to mm.org. I decided that this would be a reasonable sacrifice because I'd know who was going to read it (because they PMed me) and then even though my review count on ff.net would suffer, maybe I could get five or six people to review on mm.org for 'Mark of a Goddess' which currently has no reviews. So, then the next thing I know someone is announcing on my ff.net forum where everyone can see the chapter.
I got totally RIPPED OFF! So now anyone will know where to get it. I wrote a cranky message on the forum but it came no where near expressing how tanked I was that I got so totally ripped off. So, no one reviewed on mm.org and they're talking about the chapter on ff.net - ARGH! How unethical! It's my fault, so I feel even worse.
You know, I don't write so that I can have people's validation. I would write if I lived on a deserted planet with no one but fish for company, but I definitely upload my stories on the internet for feedback and approval and comments. I feel like I work really hard to give my readers a good story that will be fun to read and today I feel completely shafted.
Yeah, I'm probably going to lose one of my best reviewers because of this mess, but you know how many damn people are reading this story who aren't giving any feedback at all? It's shocking and disgusting. When I look at my hit counts, I know I'm being totally screwed over. Even my best friend's little sister faithfully reads every week, but I never hear a peep out of her - and she even friggin' knows me!
Everyone knows how valuable reviews are and they withhold them because they want to make their own work look better, so they can't review for a popular story without making it seem even more popular. But people want to read the popular stories, because they know they'll be a good read. I am DEAD serious when I say that if I read anything, I review EVERY CHAPTER. I think it's only common courtesy and not doing it makes writers hypocrites when they're pleased to get reviews themselves. I thank people who read my work and but my real way of thanking them is to review every chapter I read. If it kept my attention long enough for me to finish the chapter, then it deserves something!!
Yeah, I'm really mad! And I'm also really sick today, so I might not be behaving rationally.
I mean my story isn't really an important thing in the grand scheme of things. It's just a stupid little story that I'm writing to try to prep myself for bigger and better things, but at the same time - I really put a lot of time into it - and so in lots of ways, it seems like my life. It's crap like this that makes me want to give up MoaG and go straight to 'Ghost Mist'. I've decided to open a fanstory.com account when chapter one is ready. I'm not a fan of fanstory.com, but I want to see if their services are worth it. I might be able to learn a lot going through their site, so I think I'm going to give it a try.
Anyway, I'm not uploading anything new on MoaG until something happens to make me feel warm about my readership again. Until then, even if I do work on MoaG, I won't be uploading.
posted by Sapphirefly @ 1:43 PM
3 Comments:
We've already talked, so you know my feelings on most of your post, but I do want to talk a little bit more about reviews-- I don't think people don't review because they're afraid of competition; I think people don't review because people are inherently lazy.
For example: When I pick out something to read on ff, my first criteria are based on 1) what type of story it is, 2) if the summary seems interesting, 3) if the summary has grammar or spelling mistakes, because these three things typically give me a good approximation for what the story will be like. I don't go by review counts, because I've quickly found that the fanfics with highest reviews are actually ones most revolting to me.
Then, if I can actually finish the first chapter, then I would review. If I can't even last through to the end of the chapter, then the author hadn't cared enough to put forth enough effort for me to review. Heartless of me, perhaps.
Second part of review: I've actually read very few stories that were work-in-progress when I read them. It's probably because of how ff's culture is--authors typically write short chapters, and only a small group of authors actually care enough about writing to finish a complete project. So, I've had very little experience with reviewing the same story continuously. Bad excuse, of course. But, Sapphirefly, it really doesn't occur to me to review for every new chapter of MoaG when it comes out.
Third part of review: I don't really consider review as positive reinforcement as much as you do, I think. As much as I enjoy telling a greater author how I loved her work, I don't really care about the authors who obviously never proofread their prose, or authors who react badly to criticisms and tell people to not read their story if they don't like it, because those people don't deserve my time. However, I do appreciate good work, and the authors on my "tribute list" have all had a review gushing with praise and affection from me. And I value my reviews--I send each reviewer a note back, saying how much I enjoyed their review, or respond otherwise to some point they've brought up. Since the majority of people on ff are readers, I hope this would help reinforce the review gesture.
After that loooooong response, I think some of our feelings come down to how ff is set up. Unfortunately, ff only give attention to review counts. Nothing else to be done, I guess, unless they change their structure.
Hiya! I'm afraid I can't talk about my reasons for doing this anymore. I haven't been thinking about them myself except for when I've been talking to people who are reading the story. Other than that, the problem couldn't be further from my mind. I've been thinking about the story itself, but other than that - I've been consentrating on 'other' things.
I'll probably be back in three or four weeks with a new chapter.
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