WIP Challenge Check-in -- Day 12

[linaewen]

Greetings, fellow writers!  How goes it today?  Is it an awesome day for you, or are you thinking of going back to bed (or going to bed early, depending on your time zone)?

What writing-related pursuit did you engage in today?

• Writing
• Editing
• Sent to beta
• Posted
• Procrastinating
• Planning/Researching
• Something else I will describe in comments

For those who got some writing in, what was your word count?

I thought it might be interesting to discuss the following topic, brought to us by the ever-insightful Fanfic Flamingo:

 

For discussion:  How do you feel about reviews (or the lack thereof)?  Do you mind if you don't get any -- even when you know without doubt your fic is awesome?  Does the lack of reviews affect your inspiration or willingness to continue writing? 

Comments

[linaewen]

I have done nothing ficcish as yet today, except think about which WIP I might work on next if the opportunity presents itself. I have a few boring projects to finish up today, before I can get to the fic -- but it's early yet, so I remain hopeful I might actually have a word count to report before bedtime.

In my early days of writing, I used to judge my ability on how many reviews I got. Eventually I reached a point where it didn't really matter whether I got one or not. Of course, I adore reviews, and I do usually get some when I post, but if I don't get any, it won't keep me from writing. My stories seem to be more "tales that must be told whether anyone reads them or not" kinds of things. Even so, I do still look at statistics that report how many times a story/chapter has been viewed... ;-)

[littlebutfierce]

My stories seem to be more "tales that must be told whether anyone reads them or not" kinds of things.

Heh, me too. & that's all right -- I kind of like that I feel the stories so strongly I have to write them, even though they're not likely to have many people interested!

But yeah, I do monitor hit counts perhaps a bit too closely at times...

Good luck finding some time & headspace to work on fic today!

[anyssia]

I find hit counts actually motivating. Because if there are that many people (still) reading my story, even if there aren't any reviews, it's that there must be something a bit interesting in it ^^

I'll be crossing my fingers for you to write tonight! ;p

[glitteryv]

I hope you get to tackle one of those WIPs.

I like knowing the stats too.

[littlebutfierce]

I wrote! Almost 900 words for my long plotty fic (long & plotty for me, that is). I think I'm getting somewhere, at last. Although gosh, I think I may have to invent some names for spirits -- & I have no knowledge of nomenclature for spirits in Japanese mythology, eeek.

I love love love reviews! I do get sad when I don't get any, but... I'm in small fandoms, so I know the audience straightaway is smaller. & sometimes I write things that go against the fandom grain (eg. writing femslash in a fandom that is 99.9999% about the dudes). So, fair enough. I don't write for reviews, but I do love to get them, & having a smaller potential audience makes every review I do get that much sweeter.

Still, there are things I want to write -- that I have written -- that are likely not going to be popular, &... I write them cuz they are the stories in my head that want to come out, y'know?

I do get nervous if I don't get reviews when I've tried something new, when previously for a fandom I've gotten some readers. That makes me wonder if my experiment failed! & yeah, sometimes it probably did fail. Sometimes, like w/any of my fic, I think it just hasn't found the right audience yet.

[anyssia]

wow, 900 words! good work for a day! ;p

having a smaller potential audience makes every review I do get that much sweeter.
Oh yeah, I can totally understand you. And there are those fandoms that are growing old and there are less and less people following them. I'm thinking of FFVII and Buffy especially. There is a community on LJ, bloodclaim that used to have several chapters/stories posted to, every day, but it has been dwindling to a couple per week almost, it's scary and sad to watch T.T

That makes me wonder if my experiment failed!
It might not be a case of total failure, but I know that sometimes, writing a review is kind of hard, because i don't know what to say. Not especially because it's a "bad" story, but sometimes because it's too different, I don't have words.

[glitteryv]

Yay for 900 words, dude! That's awesome!

It's weird finding out what will and won't catch people's attention.

[lullabymoon]

I've mostly had the day off today, although I do plan on working a little on my outline before bed.

Most of the time I don't mind if I get reviews or not. Most of the stuff I've written recently has been more of the stories I've got to get out my head variety in very small fandoms or sections of fandoms so I don't expect to get any reviews, especially as I don't widely advertise them. That always means that getting a comment, or a kudos is a delightful bonus.

The only real time I mind about getting reviews is if it's for an exchange, as I'm always wondering if the recipient will like it or not. Sometimes when I write a fic for a pairing that's popular on my flist though I get a bit angsty, even then it's more a case of are people reading it than actual reviews.

[anyssia]

I wonder if we have learn to deal with posting fics and not getting reviews, because there are less and less people reviewing. Or, only the old people/people that have been in fandom for years are actually reviewing?

I find the kudo feature on AO3 really interesting, because people can use it so easily, they don't hesitate. On the other site, I wonder if people won't get used to leave a kudo and just skip the comment part of the review...

[glitteryv]

I hope you got to tackle that outline before catching your zzzzs.

Kudos are such quirky delights. Did you know that there's actual hard data in which it's proven that kudos gets people to comment more? It's quite interesting.

[littlebutfierce]

Oh yes, waiting for the recipient in an exchange to comment is agonizing! I did an anon exchange this past winter & the recipient didn't comment at all through the author-anon period; they commented a week or so later, once authors had been revealed, & said they had waited to do so deliberately. They did seem to like the story, but I was kind of baffled & left wondering if, had I been revealed to be another writer, would the reaction have been different? :/

[anyssia]

I finally went over the last version my beta-reader sent me \O/ It's been weeks and I kept reporting it because I knew that the chapter needed a lot of work ^^;;

So yeah, I've sent it back to my beta once more, and I think it will need another go, again, because there are way too many descriptions/narrations in comparison of the few sentences of dialogs.

Hum, review. Like a lot (every?) readers, I love receiving reviews. But it can be double-edged, because "bad" review tend to break my enthusiasm and then I spend days in a funk, even if I got good reviews too. I know it's pretty childish, but well, there's not much I can do for that ^^;;

As for giving review, until this year I tended to only reply to really good (read amazing) fanfics, because I tend to write a lot when I review and it makes me lose a lot of time. Since the beginning of 2011, I decided that just like we say "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", it was about time for me to reciprocate and I tried to review every fic I read now, even if only to say "I was there" ^^ (of course, with the number of fics I read every day, it makes quite a number of reviews xD )

[glitteryv]

Hey, the beta process can be a pain in the you know what, but it's all for the good of your fic.

[lexicalcrow]

I wrote a couple of scenes. Still progressing, but not as fast as I would like. I have two weeks to finish this thing and I would really like to get a little further ahead plz. Stop changing things on me all the time. XD

At least I don't have work til Thursday so I can spend the next few days writing and hopefully get a lot further along. D:

And, eh, I don't mind reviews, but that's possibly because I rarely get them. Damn fandoms of one. :P Which is not to say I don't like them either. I like getting reviews, but I don't need them to keep me writing. I suppose I see them more as confirmation that someone at least has taken the time to read my fic? But it'd be nice to get a few more though. I was in one very active fandom that is now half-dead and I miss all the comments I used to get. :(

[glitteryv]

*hands you a carrot so that the plot bunny for your fic doesn't meander as much* :)

Good luck with your fic.

[anyssia]

I'm surprised at how many people are here that are part of very small fandoms ^^

[curuchamion]

Got my story back from the beta. She tore it to shreds - and I am utterly chuffed. :D I knew there were parts that weren't working; I just wasn't sure what to do with them, or whether I was right that the bits I did like actually worked. Now I should be able to do a major rewrite and make it one whole heck of a lot better. :D

*happy dancing*

*is now going to bed, though*

[snowynight]

Good for the beta!

[glitteryv]

Yay for mean beta! (did that sound weird or WHAT? *g*) It's really great when you get that kind of beta actual!concrit that helps you polish your fic into something that everyone will love. \Betas!/

[littlebutfierce]

Yay for you & your beta! It's difficult to find betas who are able to do that (& are canon-familiar & have time & all that sort of stuff). Good luck forging forward from here!

[snowynight]

I wrote a 600-words Kyou Kara Maou! for kink bingo. I wrote 2 fic for this fandom, all for the kb. Kink bingo really expands my horizon.

I usually write to prompt for just write whatever in my head so I don't mind so much the lack of review but I admit I always check the hit count to my fic. This's one of the reasons I post to Arcgive of Our Own.

[glitteryv]

Go you for your 600 words! *\o/*

[glitteryv]

The good news is that the minimum word count for the Big Bang is done (20k words.) The bad news is that I have about 10-15k more words to add to the fic before I can even begin to think of the story as ready for beta. I'm thinking I've got a good five more days of writing.

I took an hour break from Big Bang fic to work on the first fill for my Hurt/Comfort bingo card. Knocked an 1,100 word ficlet full of crack (of the MAGICAL kind) that is revving me up to start working on the other Big Bang I'll be tackling this month. Thankfully, that one has a lower minimum count (10k)so, I'm feeling confident that I'll get it done by the end of this month. :)

Out of all the reviews I've gotten, there have only been two that were not-quite-positive. If I'm not mistaken, all of my fics have gotten at least a review or two. Overall, I don't write for reviews, but because I want to tell XYZ story. If other people dig my fic and gives me snaps for it, it's a total win/win situation then.

[anyssia]

Wow, that's a lot written! Good luck getting it all finished in time! ^^

Ah, I'm always in search of interesting prompt; where did you find your bingo card?

[bay_alexison]

Today was an off day for me as I want to catch up on some reading and also get some chores done. Tomorrow I plan to do some writing over a couple fic prompt challenges I had signed up for recently and another fic my friends dared me to do (they're terrible, terrible friends but I love them, LOL), so we'll see how that goes.

I think I mentioned this a while ago, but I don't care too much about reviews. Like everyone else, I write mostly to get some scenes out of my head. However, if I do get reviews I appreciate them very much, whether they're of the criticism or praise kind.

[anyssia]

Good luck getting back in the saddle today! ^^ I hope you'll manage to add some words to your word count ;p

[lacygrey]

Hi,
I think I'm a day out somehow, but anyway. Post-it planning for my Hikago fic has helped a lot. Its made it perfectly clear that I can't have the poor characters go through a month long Go exam at the same time as all the other scenes I intend. Theres still at lot going on but I feel less panicked about it.

Reviews are nice. When I write them I like to take time and think carefully about them. If everybody faces this, then its understandable that theres not so many reviews getting written. Also, many readers are not writers and reviewing can be daunting, especially if you have to use a second language to do it.

If I don't get hits at all I take it that I need to re-write the fic summary to make it more enticing.

[anyssia]

Post-it planning? Do you mean with a software like Scrivener or something, or a good old fashioned cork board and yellow post-its? If the lastest, I'd love to see that xD
(makes me think about my recent chaptered fic. If I had to put everything single idea on post-it... wow O.o lots and lots of post-its xDDDD)

If I don't get hits at all I take it that I need to re-write the fic summary to make it more enticing.
There is that too. I read and recced a fic a while ago, that was awesome in my opinion.
Still, I hesitated to rec it because I was persuaded that everybody in my circle had already read it, as it is a theme (FFVII time travel) that interests all my friends.
Turned out that none of them had read it because the summary hadn't attracted them O.O But afterward they all told me that they had loved the story. So, yeah for recs \O/

(something that made me all happy was to see reviews from my friends that author's story review page, after I had recced it. I was all: "People liked it! I helped this author gain new followers/reviewers, yay!" ;p )

[jagnikjen]

Well, as yesterday was my birthday, I did very little that was ficcish. Okay, you know I say that and it's almost never true... :)

I did a bit of writing on my challenge fic when I got up and I watched the first HP film last evening.

As for reviews...I'm always thrilled when I get an actual review, but faves are almost as good, no? I mean obviously they liked the fic well enough to want to be able to re-read it by "faving" it.

It does crack me up to get a notification for story alerts when clearly the story is a one-shot! But whatever.

Lack of reviews does not impede my desire to write. That's a part of me that I don't think's going away for a while.

[anyssia]

Happy belated birthday ^^

As long as you take five minutes to think about your stories, even if you don't write anything, I guess it's okay.

notification for story alerts when clearly the story is a one-shot
Oh, you know, just in case... ;p

But yeah, the fav stats are also interesting to follow.