shitty advice for fic writers

1) quality of ur writing =/= no. of kudos/hits
2) your self worth =/= the quality OR popularity of ur writing
3) u are under no obligation to satisfy fandom's tastes bc
4) fandom interests =/= your interests, so
5) write what you want and enjoy it

took me 3 years of wading through a hellfire lake of annihilated self esteem to be able to verbalize this but if you can learn to write for your personal enjoyment and your friends' enjoyment then this whole ao3 dot org thing will be a lot more fun for you. i swear it

by the way my Getting Over Stupid Ratios story was i got fucked up because my 2k yuri on ice fic got 4 digit kudos but when i moved on to a smaller fandom i spent a month writing 57k words and got 200+ kudos. i was bitter as fuck for maybe 3 months? 4? but what rlly helped

me realize that kudos don’t mean shit was when i started writing for rarepairs. pouring your heart into something while knowing exactly 3 people will read it helps you adjust your expectations and after a while those stupid numbers and ratios went away for me

i saw a tweet that said ‘repeat what upset u online aloud to someone else and you will Realize’ so i tried that

“i’m upset and think my writing is bad because i wrote smth i’m proud of and posted it but not a lot of strangers online hit a small white button to say they liked it”

doesn’t fuckinf make sense, does it? at the end of the day there are so many factors that decide whether a fic becomes popular. did a big artist tweet about it? did someone make fanart of it? does it just happen that this fandom likes coffeeshop aus and you wrote an apocalypse?

since we don’t have access to this information there’s really no point in speculating. so just go out there and have fun in whatever ur doing bc if you’re not writing for yourself then who’s gonna keep you going through all of the shit on the internet. not that perfect 10% ratio

to end off this thread:
1) it‘s going to take a while but i have faith in u. if u want to hear me talk more shit feel free to message me or sumn lol
2) half the time your work’s just gotten buried in the tag so if you ever need smth boosted, i’m here for u https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs/status/1148211680934895616?s=21

to add on, here’s a really good post i found on tumblr dot com about this fanfiction jazz and here are some choice screenshots. while fandom underappreciation of writers badly needs fixing, as writers, we need to learn to draw the line for ourselves too

http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/post/169716178325/writing-is-not-retail-or-why-i-dont-feel-so