Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Must I publish a chapter for it to be read? Must I finish the chapter? Is it not enough to have an incoherent Word document filled with half-written and twice-written scenes? Is it not enough to have the rest of the chapter in my head?
Your time spent enjoying the creative process is infinitely more valuable that any final project you create. So stop putting yourself down for never finishing or posting those WIPs because every moment you spent creating something you loved is a moment not wasted. Your progress and talent is measured by your passion not your number of posts.
This post went from 3k to 7k overnight and that just goes to show how many of you need to hear this so make sure you don’t ever forget it
Man i really have to kill that voice within me that insists that every story i write should be deep™
and meaningful™
if my story helped someone relax and unwind after a hard day
if my story made someone smile or chuckle as they rode the bus
if my story let time pass faster in the dentist’s waiting room
if my story made someone coo and feel shippy feels
if my story filled the boredom of a long train ride
then my story got the job done, then my story was worth writing and sharing, then my story had meaning. I have entertained!! sure it might be a cheesy cliché boring long-winded objectively bad story. But it doesn’t matter.
Stories don’t have to be good or grand to have worth. They have worth because we bothered to tell them.
“This just in: you can love writing and also find it hard.
“I was once on a panel and another author essentially said, ‘if you don’t enjoy every moment, then why are you here?’ and I was…exasperated. Creativity is a complicated beast. You don’t have to love every second to be a valid participant.
“I love the ideas. I love brainstorming, and problem-solving, and I love making this better, fine-tuning language.
“I also hate drafting, claw my way through self-doubt, crawl on my hands and knees through the frustration of the unrealized.
“I’m not here because I love every second.
“I’m here because the parts I love are worth the rest.”
Sometimes it might bother you that when you’re finished writing a story, you end up with enough discarded and unused material to make a whole second story.
Do not think of this as a failing. Those leftover bits are the Mirror Universe version of your story, and the fact that you defeated it is ultimately a good thing. Its goatee was silly, anyway.
the bits you cut out aren’t like building scrap that is only good for birdhouses and bonfires. they’re like cookie dough. you can mash them up, roll them out again, and cut out a whole new story.
use the fish shaped cutter this time. that one’s my favorite.
One reason I think it’s important that tumblr understands that AO3 emails spark dopamine and not serotonin other than the fact that I’m a neuroscientist who is very tired is because dopamine is part of the reward system.
I honestly think that emails from AO3 affect the reward system very similarly to gambling. When you get a sudden, random reward (AKA a comment on your fic), it feels great, and you want that again. But as the gambler writer, you have very little control over when the rewards come in or how many. There are games fandoms where you might have a higher chance of getting a response, or tropes, pairings, etc, but in the end, the reward is up to fickle fate (or possibly fantastic marketing on your part if you know how).
Randomly received rewards are incredibly addicting.
Similarly, not receiving a reward when you think you should get one feels very, very bad.
People who are more satisfied in their lives are less susceptible to the highs and lows of gambling and other addictive behaviors. If you are finding your relationship with you AO3 stats page or AO3 emails is unhealthy, it might be worth it to 1. turn off email notifications (so the randomness of the reward is removed) 2. Pick a time each week to check for comments (now it’s on a schedule) and 3. See if there are ways to improve your life elsewhere so that your mental health does not fluctuate with the whims of strangers sending you comments.
It’s not a moral failing to like attention. I have no judgment for people who get into a negative cycle with these things. This is for your mental health. Writing can be so rewarding for so many reasons, and I really just want to see other people find the joy in it.
This goes for your writing on tumblr as well.
And it goes triple for every single person I’ve seen on here who gets mad about not receiving enough reblogs or comments or likes or anything.
Like Stephen King says: if you’re telling stories because you want attention, you are doing it for the wrong reasons and you will never be happy.
It can simultaneously be true that many writers have an unhealthy relationship with notifications and/or stats from AO3 and/or Tumblr AND that it is reasonable to be annoyed that many people are enjoying the work that creators produce without providing any sort of recompense or signal of appreciation or gratitude.
The thing I always find a little frustrating about the criticisms of “writing for attention” is that… if it were solely about attention, people would probably pick an easier method. Or they would, at the very least, be more specifically focused on writing only the most popular tropes and chasing the current trends to get the greatest amount of bang for their time. But that’s not what most writers in fandom actually do. You get ficcers writing for rarepairs and tiny fandoms and things that went out of style 20 years ago just as much as for the huge fandom flagships. You get ficcers writing weird, unpopular tropes and rare kinks just as much as ever-popular fluffy coffeeshop AUs and shit.
Fanficcers do write for their own reasons, not for the attention or the dopamine fix—at least in terms of what they choose to write. They’re writing about what they find personally interesting or important about the source material. So I mean, in light of that it’s not surprising that people do get upset about the lack of response—because it’s not just the failure to receive a hit of dopamine from the slot machine. It’s that the hit of dopamine is also tied up with feelings of community and connection and shared interest in these specific things that you find worthwhile to spend hours of your time writing about vs. isolation and talking to yourself in an empty room about things that—apparently—no one else gives a fuck about. And even if you think writers “shouldn’t” write for “attention,” it’d be bizarre to claim that they shouldn’t care about connecting and communicating with others through their writing, because… that is literally the purpose of art (OK OK there’s more than one, but at least it is one of the major purposes of art), and it is only human to have, like, feelings about whether your work succeeded or not.
As the OP– I want to clarify that you are right– I don’t think people write for the dopamine fix.
I think the dopamine hit (or the lack of it when it was expected/hoped for) is what causes the very negative feelings that some authors get after posting.
I absolutely believe that fanfic and art is about connection and community. The purpose of this post was to shed some light on what I suspect to be the biochemical process underlying the deeply negative spirals that can be common among writers and some tips to help mitigate it.
I should clarify: my objection (and I assume @illwynd’s also) was not to the original post, which I found informative, helpful, compassionate, and nonjudgmental. In fact, I was about to reblog the original version, probably with a tag something like ‘oh shit that makes a lot of sense’ or ‘oh no it me.’ But then I looked in the notes and got annoyed when I saw that someone had used it as an opportunity to scold people for even wanting reader feedback in the first place, independent of the specific notification system that plays on particular vulnerabilities of the dopamine system.
Providing tips on how to reconfigure the AO3 stats and notifications to thwart their addictive tendencies: helpful. Telling people they shouldn’t “write for attention”: not helpful.
let lgbtq authors write about tragedy with lgbtq characters. let them write about death, toxic relationships, abuse. let them write about what it is like to be human without having to worry about “good representation” and bury your gays when the stories they want to tell may include the ugly sides of living.
i’m exhausted of hearing about authors being forced to out themselves when accused of bad representation, queerbaiting, or bury your gays.
i don’t think authors (even lgbtq authors!) are infallible in the way they can portray lgbtq characters, and they should accept criticism but also i’m fucking tired of the concept that Every lgbtq Character needs to be the Pinnacle of Purity otherwise it’s ‘bad representation’
The LGBT+ community really has a problem with this, especially when it comes to real people. This idea that LGBT+ people/characters can do no wrong and they need to be portrayed that way or else it’s toxic and relying on stereotypes.
proofreading my own writing like wow. u sure do love those commas, buddy. what if u tried to cool it with all those commas, pal. all those run-ons, friend. why don’t you tone it down, my guy
