Fic Talk > General Discussion
Questions to ponder part 11
FrickingKaos:
That last bit of what you said kinda hit home for me Mare. I tend to think about that stuff too much and it ends up demotivating me. I want to fix that, I just need to get back into a writing schedule. I would crank out chapters daily...then for some reason I stopped. Part of it is that I am my own worst critic.
RokofAges75:
I read this article about R.L. Stine reviving the "Fear Street" series earlier today: http://www.thebigthrill.org/2014/01/special-to-the-big-thrill-r-l-stine-and-the-return-of-fear-street-by-dawn-ius/
In it, he gives the following advice to adult writers:
“Figure out your audience. Go into a bookstore and pinpoint where your book belongs, where it will fit on the shelf. It drives me crazy when authors talk about writing for themselves, or writing from the heart. I’ve never written a single word from my heart—why would I? I write to entertain people. To tell a great, scary story.”
He has a point - obviously, none of us write solely for ourselves, or we wouldn't post our work online for others to read. But my question is, how much do you write for yourself, and how much do you write for other people? When you're planning a story or writing a chapter, do you think about what your readers' reactions will be or how it will be received? Do you care? Does it ever influence your writing?
mare:
--- Quote from: DelphinaCarter on January 04, 2014, 11:24:34 PM ---That last bit of what you said kinda hit home for me Mare. I tend to think about that stuff too much and it ends up demotivating me. I want to fix that, I just need to get back into a writing schedule. I would crank out chapters daily...then for some reason I stopped. Part of it is that I am my own worst critic.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I think we are all our own worst critics and sometimes focus too much on the negative. It's hard to change that thinking.
mare:
Thank you Mr. Stine! I've always said that the "I write for myself" line is a big peeve of mine because like you said Julie, if we wrote only for ourselves we wouldn't be posting our stuff on the internet and then complaining when we think people don't read it. It drives me nuts when people say that!!
I write very little for myself and more for what I think would make my readers happy. What motivates me isn't the joy of writing but the joy of watching the reaction my writing will get. It's always what I think about when coming up with plot twists. Sometimes I will actually write something solely for the purpose of one person's reaction to it. That person tends to change from chapter to chapter or story to story but if I know someone is a devoted reader and thinks a story is going in one direction, I will sometimes change it just to make them say "I didn't see that coming!"
I actually give the people who never get reviews credit for continually posting their stories. I'm not sure I could do that. Maybe at the beginning of my fanfic writing career when you just are looking for that first bit of feedback and then when you get it, you squee! But I honestly can say I'm not sure if I would continue to post a story if I got zero reviews. I would if I knew at least one person was reading and reviewing but if I got nothing, I am pretty sure I wouldn't keep writing on it, which only shows I do it for the readers more than for me.
I guess that would be a good follow up question, what about you? If you continually got zero reviews for your story, I don't mean only one or two but where it says reviews there is a big, fat zero. Would you still continue to work on that story and continually update it? Or would you put it on the back burner and move on?
julilly:
I would argue that we are more in a position of being able to say we are writing for ourselves because it's a hobby. For an author, whose lifestyle depends on book sales, says they don't write for an audience it's a bit of a stretch because let's face it, they write to make money. None of us are writing for anything more than reviews, and many people posts stories that have absolutely no reviews, so I don't think it's unreasonable to think maybe they didn't actually care what other people thought because they liked the idea.
I have a couple stories that have less than 10 reviews and that doesn't really bug me because it was more about the enjoyment of the process. That's why when I stop enjoying the process I have a hard time finishing stories because I'm not completely writing them for the reader, no matter how much they may want them finished.
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