on feedback

[lobelia321]

I love feedback.

It is the only reason we all post (is it not?). And it is why I needed to get back into posting, not just writing endless wips at home in isolation from the world. Because I craved the feedback.

Three reason I love feedback:

1. Ego strokes. Obviously. (But can also be a trap because if there is no feedback the ego is left wanting!)

2. Meeting new people I'd never have met otherwise.

3. Finding out things about what I've written that I had not realised were in there. That is, learning something about my own writing. This is the one I had forgotten about during my posting drought and it is in a way the best one of the lot. I love, I absolutely love it, when readers see things in a fic that I hadn't consciously thought about putting in there. Even if they say they don't like something (provided they say this nicely, of course -- whoo, you all know how pathetically thin-skinned I get when people are not polite), it can still be really, really interesting, as I found out with the recently posted Spiralling fic.



One interesting thing that happened when fandom moved from the yahoo group to LJ was that feedback quantitiy became transparent. On the yahoo groups, you could only guess how popular other writers' fics were. Now on LJ you know. You see them clocking up the multiple pages as LJ ceases to contain the weight of their amazing feedback. And you can, insidious as it is, compare yourself with others.

I am not getting these phenomenal amounts of feedback that people are saying are characteristic and overwhelming in SGA. I am getting very nice and loved-by-me feedback but quantity-wise it is about the same as I used to get towards the end of lotrips for improvs and crack quickies.

Being anal, I keep tabs of all my feedback.

The high point of my feedback was A Perfect Day: 59 feedbacks. This may not be able to compete with fics that eat fandoms but as far as I'm concerned, that is masses.

Now that was the end fic of a series so people had a chance to get into the plot, and it was a very, very popular OTP (Dom/Orli) plus had a helping of another very, very popular OTP (Dom/Billy) so it was strategically a good entry fic for the lotrips fandom (although I did not know this at the time!). On the other hand, not all OTP fics get huge amount of feedback so I'm shamelessly going to attribute some of this popularity to my own astounding writing skills as well, hah.

Except not. I think what it was that made it popular with many people wasn't necessarily writing skills but the passion behind it. I did completely cathect that pairing and I bled my heart's blood into that fic, and I think, in the end, that comes across, that lives within the fic, never mind skill or style.

Rare pairings always have a harder time of it. But even so, my femslash At about six o'clock got 20 feedbacks (Liv/Miranda), and my very weird and rare fps The Orc's tongue (Billy/orc) also got 20. Which I think is a lot for such rareness. One of the lowest feedback counts I've got is for my first John/Bern (only six).

This is all 2002 and 2003, btw, when I was in full posting swing. I haven't been quite so anal for the later fics, hm, must redress that...

Now for the experimental fics. The most experimental fic I wrote up until recently was When we are human (written in the first person plural and from the pov of a succession of arthropods) and even that got 26 feedbacks. I think this was because by then I had a loyal group of readers. Also, I now remember that fic took it out of me and was the last thing I posted before plummeting into Depression. It transmuted into the endless and never-posted K/D saga of doom and angst. But I also remember hitting an impasse: this was so experimental, whither from there? eyebrowofdoom, I remember, said at the time something like 'well, it depends if you want to keep writing -- ' and I can't recall the exact phrase she used, but it was something like 'realistic affective fic'. And I thought, yes, that's what I want to keep on writing so I'll leave the experimentation behind me.

Except not! Because now I've rediscovered the experimentation, and I think Spiralling Out, Spiralling In is in some ways even more experimental than When We Are Human, and it feels good to be back in that game (but that is food for another post!). So far, that has got 9 feedbacks. Which I'm attributing to it being a rare pairing, to me not being very much known any more, to it being an established fandom and I'm a newcomer (unlike lotrips which I discovered within a month of it being set up), to it being experimental in a fandom that doesn't do as much experimenting as did lotrips, and hm, then I don't know.

I was thinking about beta and whether beta makes a fic 'better' so that a fic gets 'more' feedback. (Not that 'good' and 'lots of feedback' necessarily go together although in my epxerience the fics I adore are usually also adored by everybody else so there is probably some correlation. Heh, but I of the Little Feedback like to think there isn't!) Some of my popular lotrips fics were betaed but others weren't so I think it depends. I think it's difficult to have an experimental fic betaed (for reasons that will get me beyond the ostensible topic of this post). So I don't think beta and popularity necessarily go together.

I was also thinking about what I mentioned above, the passion. The life's blood being bled. If you're experimenting with prose, there is perhaps less life's blood being shed because you're paying attention to words as much as you are to the characters. Otoh, A Perfect Day was, for me, at that time, a branching-out into new forms of 'lyrical' writing; for me, it was a daring leap, and I was paying attention to the words. And no, I'm not as droolingly swoonsome over Eldon and Rodney as I was over Dom and Orli.

Anyway, you will tell me that I am THINKING TOO MUCH again! And no doubt I am. :-)

But I think the best remedy against feedback angst is to plough on with more fic. I've still got that Cadman fic to finish and post, and I've got the John/wraith all plotted out in my head and it nearly made me weep. Ah well, it's a rare pairing but: it's nonsense to pretend that I am not writing for others; of course, I am; I post for the feedback and the resonance. But I am also writing for myself and, as I discovererd recently, I am writing for the words. About which I will make another post perhaps.

omg, it's a quarter past ten, and I have another 25 minutes of SGA 'Instinct' to watch!

Also, I finished my rl book Intro today and started on Chapter One whose provisional title is 'Clues'.

Sorry, people. I know. Unmitigated navel gazing and self-indulgence. But hey, it is called a 'journal'....

Comments

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

Well, I will do what you don't want me to do and talk about A Perfect Day.

I said to Lazlet, quite recently, that after not reading any fic for ages I went back and read A Perfect Day. I said that it had stood the test of time and that it was one of the best fics written in LOTR RPS. I am saying this from the perspective of someone who no longer likes either Dom or Orli. I love its restraint. I love the bit before the day, when Dom and Orli are on the coach. I love the bit where Dom looks around Orli's room and likes it. I like it because they are human. I would even have read it as het if you had written it that way.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But I've got to move on, you see! That was one of the first fics I wrote in my first ever fandom in the spring of 2002. I can't be stuck there and keep thinking, oh, Perfect Day, I'll never reach those halcyon heights again. That's what I thought after When We Are Human. I've got to plough on and, as cesperanza says, keep on staying in the game and keep on believing that the best fic is yet to be written, around the corner. Otherwise, I would give up and not write. And that is not happy-making.

I sometimes re-read A Perfect Day, too. It has such an innocent sweetness. I have lost that innocence now; I've been in fandom too long! I've acquired all sorts of attitudes about Writing! I can only keep on writing and maybe write myself back into a state akin to that sweet innocence.

I have to say, though, it's also those boys. They were sweet and innocent, and it spilled into the fic. I just haven't been able to do that with any one in another fandom.

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

Okay, maybe you've just not found the right boys recently.

I also believe though that you have to be burning to write something. I wrote fota because I was sick of angst fics in which fucked up people end up in some great romance because they are fucked up. Or something like that. Doesn't matter as only lazlet understood fota anyway.

The point is: what are you burning to say, and which actors/characters would say that for you?

I am writing fota at this very moment, because I can't move on until it is done.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, and can I say I love you for remembering the bit on the bus? That chapter wasn't so liked by people but I have a terribly soft spot for it because it is the beginning of Dom/Orli, and the scene in the bus is the germ of Dom/Orli; for me, it is all already there, in their conversation and in the way they both fall asleep. That chapter has lots of flaws, too, but somehow they don't seem to matter.

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

Yes. Exactly. It said everything about knowing each other. I mean genuinely knowing each other.

To me, it was why people fall in love. It is because they grasped each other's humanity.

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

Obvious points, which you may have covered and I've not noticed.

Where are you posting the fic to? Do lots of people in the new fandom know it is there?

Have you stated that you are a newbie in the fandom and you would love fb?
(I was always more likely to send fb to someone if I knew they were new and they wrote something half decent).

Have you written something that going to be popular because it:

Is just slightly different from the norm
or
Of exceptional quality?

Have you got an influential fandom friend who is goading her friends to fb you?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't say I was a newbie. I've been reading the fic for months so technically I'm not. It's just the first lot of SGA fics that I'm posting. I never really like it when people buy themselves into a fandom, saying 'I'm a newbie', it tends to put me off, so I didn't do it myself.

No, I didn't set out to be popular. I did write one short fic with a very popular pairing in it but that, too, didn't get huge amounts of fb. Also, I'm resistant to 'setting out' to be popular.

Heh, no, I have no influential fandom friend!

These are shrewd questions!

I just realised you didn't ask me had I 'set' out to be popular but whether I had written something that had the potential to be popular. I have no idea of gauging these things in advance! You know, I can never predict and have never been able to predict any response pattern to my fics ever (unless a series).

And you ask 'is it exceptional quality'. *hugs you for that question* But honestly, how can I answer that myself? Actually, no, judging by all my fics, I don't think what I have posted recently is of 'exceptional' quality. And it's been experimental (except for the OTP one I mentioned earlier which was simply timid as it was my first post in many, many months), and experimental stuff is, perhaps, by its very nature not of 'exceptional quality'.

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

quality not quantity, dear 'belia. i have seen some absolute trash receive heaps of feedback just because it was written by a "popular" writer (ie., someone with a huge friends list who is in almost constant dialogue with 'em all). surely it's better to get a smaller amount of sincere/thoughtful feedback responding to something that you yourself are objectively proud of?

b.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, birdie, I know all this! But, heh, I can't very well dismiss my own past successes and say, aw well, I used to get masses of feedback but it was all trash...? *gg* Do you see what I mean? I'm sort of too humble to believe that readers tend to go for trash especially as the fics I love are also loved by loads of others so the trash and popularity also do not necessarily go together.

I am not saying I don't like the feedback I have got! I love the feedback I have got and am endlessly grateful, especially as I've been experimenting and doing rare pairings, so getting anybody at all to read is lovely. So this is not a complaint, it's just a musing on the nature of feedback. Not having had any fb for so long, I find myself thinking about it! :-)

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

I can't very well dismiss my own past successes and say, aw well, I used to get masses of feedback but it was all trash
now you know that's not what i meant...

i dunno, it's a tricky beast, feedback. also - something that occurs to me - when you started your journal it was obviously to take part in lotrips. therefore, most - if not all - of your flist would have been a potential audience. how many folks on your flist now are into sga? myself as an example - i don't even know what it *is*. i might have a quick scan if you're playing with writing styles or whatever, but i'll admit that i don't read it, because i'm not part of it in any way.

b.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Also (re-reading your comment), it is true, that is another factor I had forgotten: fics will garner feedback because they are written by a well-known sociable person. Not that I don't spend inordinate amounts of time on LJ, more than is possibly healthy for me.... *gg* Thanks for the kind thoughts, though!

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

Not that I don't spend inordinate amounts of time on LJ, more than is possibly healthy for me.
yes, but you're not a hysterical fifteen-year-old with a flist of thousands who is heavily involved in every kerfuffle and intrigue, *lol*.

b.x :)

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

as girlie said, it's so much to do with promotion, luvvie. marketing, might i even say? some people manage to build up a profile in a fandom (as you yourself did, in lotrips, whether you meant to or not) and that itself guarantees readership.

and i don't know how much of your flist is currently lotrips or ex-lotrips people, and how many are SGA, but again as girlie said, perhaps there's abit of lag as people catch up on fandoms, or don't follow them at all. you know i adore your writing but i'm not into SGA and so i don't read it much... and if i do, i'm not as likely to leave fb, because i'm not as sure of the criteria outside of 'well-written' and 'nice metaphors'.

also. my last inane bit of wisdom on the subject (about which i've also wondered... my 'numbers' of fb dwindled towards the end of lotrips, although i thought my fic was actually in some ways getting better) is that i think posting time/date has something to do with it. i know people tab and bookmark, but i reckon friday night, for example, is not a good time to post fic, as everyone's too shagged and/or tired to read it. gauge your posting schedule, lobe!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, Soph, I've been there and done all that. I used to post on Tuesday evenings at 10 pm because I had worked out that maximised feedback. 111 But this is obsessive! I stopped doing that after a while, and I'm certainly not doing it now because at the moment I am not about the feedback maximising but about the posting, posting, posting and getting it out there (after my long, long posting drought). I know that everybody is sort of misunderstanding this post as a waah, i want more fb post. Which, re-reading my lj-cut text especially, it sort of almost is but not really. It is more of a musing and a pondering on what feedback is and means to me and does it reflect popularity or quality, and how do the two go together? (This is also something I wrote about this very morning in the Intro to my rl book! Not fb, but pop/qual.) I'm also not trying to garner feedback from my Friends, far be it from me to do that! I always feel uncomfortable when people do that to me! And in a way it's good that so few people on my list are SGA because that frees me from thinking 'ack, why aren't they all reading me-me-me?'.

So, I'm neither going to adjust my posting schedule nor am I going to start marketing myself (other than how I'm marketing myself already, hoho) but I hope that I'll keep the posting momentum up! In the end, it's just about the writer and the keyboard and the Shorter Oxford. *g* The rest is icing.

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

lobe i don't think you're whining for fb -- but it IS interesting, the mechanics of it, the way it influences you or encourages you or restricts and intimidates you (ie, one, not you in particular). what you said about the competitive nature of seeing how many people have commented on a fic is true -- it's like an (unwitting?) performance of popularity, as well as quality -- or both, equally.

i think you're in an interesting place because you're trying to resist the writing-to-expectations that can come from having established a style or popularity, as you did -- not that you write to expectations (john/bern sure wasn't expected!) but that there becomes a kind of, excuse me while i break into wanky french critical terms, a kind of plaisir at work, where you're working within a canon that you've set (even for yourself), and i think you're trying to break into a more risky and emancipated kind of writing, for yourself.

my GOD but that was a long and awkward sentence. no marks for style for me!

could you apply the term praxis to this? the meeting of practice and theory? theory is the writing on one's own, for the sheer expression of it; practice is posting. or actually, it's past midnight and i think i'm talking out of my arse.

this is the kind of thing, though, that i was gettign at in my musing about iconitude -- is it for you, or the recipient? isn't that an important thing to consider? are we solipcists or communicators?

oh LORD send me to bed. :)

[travelingcarrot.livejournal.com]

I can't give fb on sga because I know nothing about it. (Though so many people seem to be writing it, I might have to see it just to appreciate the slash.) I doubt however that anything will ever take the place of Lotrips in my heart - I'm a tragically loyal girl. I can definitely appreciate and enjoy HP and Pirates but nothing gets to me like Lotrips.

BTW, I love your navel-gazing.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am pathetically nostalgic for lotrips and have to find strategies to get me out of the 'oh those were the halcyon days, never to return' bind. *g* I'm so relieved you like my navel gazing. I tend to tie myself up in knots over it. And as I said above: this post was not, I repeat not, a plea for feedback! Although I do realise, re-reading, that the way I phrased some of it may have been open to that misunderstanding... :-)

I see your bum and raise you another one. *g*

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

oh those were the halcyon days
i think they probably were, for a lot of people. :(

*contributes another bum to the thread, yo*

b.x :D

[blithesea.livejournal.com]

Should I comment even though I don't have anything really constructive to say? I always love your posts on writing. icarusancalion has talked about moving from HP to SGA, and missing the feedback, and reader audience. By now quite a number of people from my friends list, most esteemed writers from completely different fandoms, have expressed their love for SGA that I am hard tempted to have a look at it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, please do comment! I always love hearing from you! :-) It's interesting what you say, that it's an experience others have, and it may simply have to do with switching fandoms and moving from a familiar environment where you know every woman and their cow to an unfamiliar environment which is a bit scary. I fell for SGA because of the fic. I had read a ton of fic before I even glimpsed my first view of canon! *g* I've recced some of them at del.icio.us, if you're looking for a place to start. :-)

[justabi.livejournal.com]

See, the thing about SGA and feedback is that there are some pairings, like McKay/Sheppard that garner lots of feedback, just no matter what, even if you are unknown and it's terrible, you will at least get 10 comments and probably if it's even remotely good 25. If it's something that gets rec'ed all over the place you can get pages and page and pages, but that is mostly a traffic issue. You have to have the traffic and you really can't get a whole lot on less popular pairings. I wrote a story which I loved, a Radek/Rodney story, and it got minimal feedback, but I was expecting that because it isn't one of those pairings you get a lot of feedback on.

But I totally get what you are saying. I totally crave feedback in a way that I crave chocolate on my period. But, like you, I would rather write things that interest me than stuff that's gonna get a ton of feedback. *hugs tight*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I did get at least 10 comments on my John/Rodney. God, it's like buying yourself into a fandom. But also, for me, a challenge: let's get the really popular OTP out of the way, let's see if I can do this one. But the popular pairing fb thing is the same in all fandoms, I think; it certainly was in lotrips where particular pairings automatically guaranteed an audience you'd never get with an obscure pairing. I am the mistress of rare pairings, for whatever weird reason I always fall for them, even without knowing sometimes that they are rare, so I know all about putting up with less fb for the obscurities, alas, *g*. The nice thing with rare pairings, though, is that the people who do read them also tend really to love them. Or be willing to try new things, and that has its own charm.

Where is your Rodney/Radek? Because it is a mystery to me how that pairing cannot inspire unfailing love and lust. *g*

And yes, what you say about the chocolate and the feedback craving and the writing of stuff that doesn't get the feedback -- I am so glad you understand! :-)

[justabi.livejournal.com]

Here is my Rodney/Radek story.

It really is like buying into a fandom, writing the biggest OTP. The thing is, I think it's kind of like boy bands or something where you kinda have to pay your dues singing pop music before you can do what you want if you want thousands of slavering fans, yes? Sadly, I'm more like... well, *giggle* more like that local band with twenty fans.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Personally, I can't believe no one wanted to read my writing experiment that wasn't even really a fic and that didn't have any slash in it and that I basically slagged off when I linked to it. What's up with that? People are weird! ;)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You need an agent! *laughs*

I hope you are not letting this put you off. Because I will read and I want to read more! Are you going to give me some guidelines now?? Maybe gacked from your wonderful how-to-write-poetry book but adapted to prose?