Tag: good tips!!!

pro-antagonist:

star-anise:

When you write fanfiction, it’s easy to feel like you don’t get “enough” feedback and think that you’d feel happier and more confident about your writing if you got more. But in my experience, that’s not always true–I’ve seen people who went, “I only got 3 kudos, my last story got 5″ get more popular and then go, “I only got 300 kudos, my last story got 500.”

If you’re prone to doubting yourself and your work, getting more feedback will not magically fix it for you. You have to put a little work in to open yourself up to the possibility that your work doesn’t suck.

Ways I’ve found to feel better about the feedback you get:

  1. Learn how to savour minimal feedback instead of dismissing it. It’s easy to dismiss likes or kudos as “meaningless”, but they still mean someone read what you wrote and enjoyed it enough to hit that button. This is corny, but: When I feel like crap, I go through my likes/kudos and thank everyone out loud by name. “Thank you, iguanaluvr. I’m glad you liked it. Thank you, rmb86. I’m glad you liked it. Thank you, tonysgirl, I’m glad…” Cultivating gratitude can lead to joy.
  2. Convince yourself that your reviewers are real people. If you’re anything like me, in a bad mood you minimize the feedback you do get and think, “It’s not like their opinions are important, anyway.” Comments just get reduced to a number on a screen. Give that number weight and meaning by finding out who’s leaving them. Click through to the profiles of people leaving you comments, likes, and kudos. Do what you can to make them feel like other human beings in your mind, so their opinions hold more weight.
  3. Build relationships with your frequent commenters. I sometimes feel weirded out and confused by people who actually like my work, and I’m tempted to back away slowly. If they like my work, can their opinions really be worth much? But that kind of thinking keeps me isolated. What brings me the most joy in fandom is friendship and connection, especially if I feel like I can contribute something substantial to the relationship. And if somebody likes your work, it’s probable that you two share interests and preferences. Consider asking your commenters questions about their tastes and interests, reading your commenters’ own fanworks, or following them back on Tumblr. This turns a comment email from someone else saying “This is great!” to that specific person, like Jen who loves your genre and has a grey cat, saying she really loved your story.

Another tip I like:

Look at how many hits you have on your story. Then imagine the same number of real people standing in a crowd in front of you.

Then you’re less likely to think, “My story only got 100 hits.” Instead, it becomes “Holy crap, 100 actual people clicked on my story.”