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Entry tags:
Writing neurosis; attention meta (not: attention! Meta! *g*)
So, whenever I've posted new fic to my website and announced it in LJ, I tend to check my website stats the next day or so, because I do want to know about the people who read my stuff. Not writing *for* an audience does *not* equal not being curious about the audience you do acquire - and it's simply a fact that if I put something online, it will be read, and yes, I am curious about those invisible strangers who consume something that was produced by my brain. (That, in itself, is not neurotic, I think.)
So... 97 hits since posting.
(Possibly) little known fact: I can see who reads my story - at least for a significant number of the readers. No, I'm not psychic; it's just that my webspace provider's stats include info on where people came from. So, if - as is the case in about 90% of the cases - you came from your friends page to my website, the stats will tell me you came from "http://yournamegoeshere.livejournal.com/friends" or "http://yournamegoeshere.livejournal.com/friends/people_I_read_occasionally" or whatever. Sure, it could be someone else who just happened to read your friends page and followed the link to my story displayed there, but I kind of assume that that doesn't happen all that often. (I may be wrong there.)
It's nice to be able to see who 'visited', even if they didn't leave a comment. :)
Occasionally - very occasionally - however, it also causes... well, maybe not exactly angst but certainly a kind of puzzlement. This happens when I see that people who I was almost 100% certain would like the story (and whose opinions I'm very interested in, because they're smart and bright and brilliant writers whose brains I want to marry and so on) have read it yet haven't commented. Because then I'm kind of set to wondering, what happened there? Were they busy and only had a minute to sort of scan the story before RL snatched them away from the keyboard again? Were they in a "no talking" mood? - I know it happens to me, and hey, this is still true. Or - and this is where the writing neurosis rears its ugly head: did they think the story sucked, and either didn't tell me because they wanted to avoid hurting my feelings, or simply because they thought it was so blah it wasn't worth talking about at all?
Now, I firmly believe that, *especially* in fandom, it is absolutely essential to one's emotional wellbeing to, well, not put a lot of weight on how many, or which, people react (or, as the case may be, *don't* react) to something you post. That way, inferiority complexes lie. I mean, like probably most of us, I've *been* there, in the early years, feeling like the most boring and worthless person in the world when a carefully considered forum post or fic I posted sank like a rock. It takes a special kind of resilience to experience that, and experience that *repeatedly*, and yet persist in fandom. (A solid 'sociological' understanding of how people/groups work helps, because it prevents you from automatically coming to the conclusion of 'I'm too boring to be noticed'.)
Well, as you can see, I'm still here, so I clearly have some of that resilience. ;-) And while I have, in the last three years, reached the dizzy heights of being recced on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
crack_van a couple of times, and being linked on metafandom (before I was dropped from their trawl lists again), I'm mostly back now to being mostly ignored, and I'm mostly fine with that. I understand that it's very probably because of my extremely erratic posting behaviour and my general anti-socialness; I understand that my worth as a person (and my worth as a writer) is not directly related to the amount and kind of attention I get.
There's just two areas where this not expecting attention thing still gets a bit tricky on occasion.
One is if people whom I hero worship a bit are concerned. I still don't *expect* them to react to anything I do, but it's hard/impossible to kill the hope (and, oh, did I mention I've been defriended by a couple of those people in the past? Talk about blows to the ego...)
The other is if people with whom I feel a somewhat closer connection are concerned. That's the real clincher. Because I am pathologically anti-social in Real Life, I have no handle on the practice of normal human relationships (I can write about them, sort of, but even there I have obvious limits). Reciprocity is... confusing. How much of it is normal? How much is too much? What are you supposed to expect of people, and what is too much to expect? My 'solution' to these questions so far has been the same I employ for fandom interactions in general, namely: try not to expect anything, ever. (Especially as I'm chronically unreliable myself in a number of serious ways in RL.) But even I can see that that is its own kind of neurotic, really.
Arrgh. Okay, this got long but not necessarily clearer, but I'm too frelling hungry to continue writing, or clarifying. And hey, it's mypartyLJ, I can cryramble if I want to. *g*
Need food now.
*
Someone's mysteriously found this post via metafandom, though I can't see anything there? Oh well, I don't mind either way. So, hi to anyone who wanders in from that direction. Oh, and a lot of people have reacted to this with apologies. Folks: this is not necessary. This wasn't about guilt tripping you; it was about my own neurosis. Neurosis as in 'unhealthy behaviour/thinking pattern'. So, no reason for you to apologise. The problem is located in my psyche, not your behaviour. :-)
Need sleep now.
So... 97 hits since posting.
(Possibly) little known fact: I can see who reads my story - at least for a significant number of the readers. No, I'm not psychic; it's just that my webspace provider's stats include info on where people came from. So, if - as is the case in about 90% of the cases - you came from your friends page to my website, the stats will tell me you came from "http://yournamegoeshere.livejournal.com/friends" or "http://yournamegoeshere.livejournal.com/friends/people_I_read_occasionally" or whatever. Sure, it could be someone else who just happened to read your friends page and followed the link to my story displayed there, but I kind of assume that that doesn't happen all that often. (I may be wrong there.)
It's nice to be able to see who 'visited', even if they didn't leave a comment. :)
Occasionally - very occasionally - however, it also causes... well, maybe not exactly angst but certainly a kind of puzzlement. This happens when I see that people who I was almost 100% certain would like the story (and whose opinions I'm very interested in, because they're smart and bright and brilliant writers whose brains I want to marry and so on) have read it yet haven't commented. Because then I'm kind of set to wondering, what happened there? Were they busy and only had a minute to sort of scan the story before RL snatched them away from the keyboard again? Were they in a "no talking" mood? - I know it happens to me, and hey, this is still true. Or - and this is where the writing neurosis rears its ugly head: did they think the story sucked, and either didn't tell me because they wanted to avoid hurting my feelings, or simply because they thought it was so blah it wasn't worth talking about at all?
Now, I firmly believe that, *especially* in fandom, it is absolutely essential to one's emotional wellbeing to, well, not put a lot of weight on how many, or which, people react (or, as the case may be, *don't* react) to something you post. That way, inferiority complexes lie. I mean, like probably most of us, I've *been* there, in the early years, feeling like the most boring and worthless person in the world when a carefully considered forum post or fic I posted sank like a rock. It takes a special kind of resilience to experience that, and experience that *repeatedly*, and yet persist in fandom. (A solid 'sociological' understanding of how people/groups work helps, because it prevents you from automatically coming to the conclusion of 'I'm too boring to be noticed'.)
Well, as you can see, I'm still here, so I clearly have some of that resilience. ;-) And while I have, in the last three years, reached the dizzy heights of being recced on
crack_van a couple of times, and being linked on metafandom (before I was dropped from their trawl lists again), I'm mostly back now to being mostly ignored, and I'm mostly fine with that. I understand that it's very probably because of my extremely erratic posting behaviour and my general anti-socialness; I understand that my worth as a person (and my worth as a writer) is not directly related to the amount and kind of attention I get.There's just two areas where this not expecting attention thing still gets a bit tricky on occasion.
One is if people whom I hero worship a bit are concerned. I still don't *expect* them to react to anything I do, but it's hard/impossible to kill the hope (and, oh, did I mention I've been defriended by a couple of those people in the past? Talk about blows to the ego...)
The other is if people with whom I feel a somewhat closer connection are concerned. That's the real clincher. Because I am pathologically anti-social in Real Life, I have no handle on the practice of normal human relationships (I can write about them, sort of, but even there I have obvious limits). Reciprocity is... confusing. How much of it is normal? How much is too much? What are you supposed to expect of people, and what is too much to expect? My 'solution' to these questions so far has been the same I employ for fandom interactions in general, namely: try not to expect anything, ever. (Especially as I'm chronically unreliable myself in a number of serious ways in RL.) But even I can see that that is its own kind of neurotic, really.
Arrgh. Okay, this got long but not necessarily clearer, but I'm too frelling hungry to continue writing, or clarifying. And hey, it's my
Need food now.
*
Someone's mysteriously found this post via metafandom, though I can't see anything there? Oh well, I don't mind either way. So, hi to anyone who wanders in from that direction. Oh, and a lot of people have reacted to this with apologies. Folks: this is not necessary. This wasn't about guilt tripping you; it was about my own neurosis. Neurosis as in 'unhealthy behaviour/thinking pattern'. So, no reason for you to apologise. The problem is located in my psyche, not your behaviour. :-)
Need sleep now.