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Thoughts About My Fim-fiction Experience

Jaxsie (Inactive)

Entry posted by Jaxsie (Inactive)

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Hello all, :)

 

Since posting my story on Fim-fiction less than a month ago, I've learned quite a bit. I'm still a newbie to this new world on MLP story telling and I still have a long way as a writer. But some thoughts have been swirling in my mind, so why not share them here?

 

I never knew how frightening sharing your work with others could be. It's easy to say that it's no big deal; that is, until you actually do it yourself. After waking up the morning after my story was published, I felt like I had a knot in my stomach! :lol: And I had to find the courage to check to see how my story was doing.

 

Going into this, I thought that people would like my story as much as I did. I was optimistic, excited, and really nervous. Checking my story that day and seeing another down vote, tore at me. I tried to not let it bother me, but slowly and surely as more people down voted I literally wanted to cry. So many questions popped into my head. Why didn't they like it? Why won't anyone comment? Am I a bad writer? I had to push these thoughts aside -- I realized I got caught up.

 

I was being prideful and having people down vote something I worked so hard on really knocked me off my high horse. And that was a good thing.

 

I learned from this experience so far that it takes a lot of guts to do something worth while. Nothing worth having comes without a challenge. This has challenged me as a writer more than any other situation. Am I going to give up? -- or am I gonna keep going? As discouraging and frustrating as it is, the former is not an option.

 

I realized I care too much. I cared too much about what others thought or what others will think. And I let that influence my writing. Reading my story now, it doesn't have the same spark anymore. I came into this with the mentality that I'm writing this for myself more than anyone else. But over time, this faded away without me noticing. I began writing for others; and not for myself first.

 

I see now how it feels to be on the receiving end of a down vote...it's not fun. I let it slowly chip away at my motivation to write the story. I respect people's stories more now as a result. When you down vote a sorry; it's not just a story. It's someone's hard work manifest and down voting it can be like down voting writer. It's really easy to take it personal. And it hurts, I imagine especially if your new. Now, when I see a story I like, I go out of my way to say so; because I know how much I wanted to see someone praise my work but never did. And if I read a story I don't like, I will give it a fair chance before I down vote and explain why if I do.

 

Seeing other people's work do better than your own is hard. And I had to fight off jealousy. There was one story I read that was published around the same time as mine and it was good. Inside l didn't want to acknowledge it, though. But I realized how silly that was and gave a comment and like. It's really easy to be jealous of other people's work and success while you see your own flounder. But it taught me to be truly happy for other people when they succeed; even if I don't. ^^

 

I don't know if I will continue with the story or take it down; but I'm not giving up. Since coming to these realizations and changing my mentality on these things, new ideas are manifesting themselves out of no where. And writing them is fun; not work. They aren't filtered through what I think people would like to read -- I like the stories first and truly. More than likely I'll post them on Fim-fiction, but this time with a new set of lenses after everything I learned with the last one. :)

 

These are just some of my thoughts. Feel free to comment. :)

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碇 シンジン

Its same with me and the down votes and negative feedback is one reason why I am afraid of posting my stories on Fimfiction, because I know it hurts and I cant take it. I never published any of my stories and I am beginner and negative feedback can totally collapse me and my work. *hug

 

I see you are strong and you could overcome the negative votes and that is very admirable and inspiring =)=) keep being awesome my friend and dont listen them in they are mean =). Write the stories because you want to write them, share them because you want to get better and share your feelings and thoughts through the written word. Dont listen what other people say, they are your stories your world, your imagination. =)<3

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Jackie Snack

I know how you feel, hun~

 

I ALSO know something strange. I have three stories published and two of them got far more attention than my third. Two of them feature canon characters and my third is purely OC.

'Aw, but you should feel happy that your stories got a lot of views!'

 

Nope, cuz those two stories took me like, a week each to write. My OC story, I have spent a couple of years on, multiple chapters, blood and sweat put into it... and it has a third of the views. Dx That's annoying, too.

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PoisonClaw

I can relate to the feeling of jealousy. I spend forever writing something and then someone writes something they admit was written in less than an hour, yet has hundreds of more views and I' always like "Why isn't mine more popular?!" 

 

Course, I didn't expect my first fic to get more than 100 hits, so the fact that it has 300+ as of now means I've achieved something at least!

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CaptainDoubloon

I had a similar experience with fim fiction. I was nervous to post my story and afterwards received numerous thumbs down, received comments how people are sick of reading stories involving humans turned into ponies, and someone rudely including a video with their post saying if I continued writing my story I would get a lot of boos (the video). Frustrated I took my story off and couldn't delete my account. I have part of my story on my blog but haven't found the drive to want to continue it.

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ponylaces

They down voted and never commented? That kinda goes against what they're trying to prove.. They should've at least made a comment about what was wrong with the story or how you could improve.

 

I have no experience whatsoever with Fimfiction (I've read a couple of stories, but that's all), but I've done YouTube in the past. Getting a dislike on a video doesn't hurt me as much, but it still leaves me wondering what I did wrong.

 

Could you link me the story so I could check it out?

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Shanks

I have been writing fanfics for a while and so far I have published 3 stories, none of which are complete yet. My first story is about Rarity getting a cockroach infestation, so far it has been well received with some constructive criticism about pacing in certain parts of the story and comments about certain punctuation mistakes. My second story is a toilet humor fic where the Apple Family goes into the bat guano business thanks to the excess guano due to the vampire fruits bats at Sweet Apple Acres.

 

The toilet humor fic hasn't received as much attention though part of this is because I haven't posted or advertised it here due to its over the top language and subject matter. The comments I have gotten indicate that is is not as well received so far as my other fics. My third is a clopfic revolving around a fetish most people haven't heard of but that I have personal experience so it racked up a lot of favorites and upvotes and got me more followers more quickly than any story I have written so far. I haven't gotten any negative feedback on that though looking back I probably could have done better on the first chapter (writing drunken dialogue is not easy).

 

No matter what you post not everyone is going to like it but that dosen't mean that you should be afraid of negative comments or downvotes. You might get some mean spirited comments once in a while but those can and should be ignored. The more constructive negative comments ie ones that point out the flaws in your story in a direct yet polite manner on other hand you should listen to. It dosen't mean you ALWAYS have to take their advice but that you should merely keep it in mind. There are some review groups on fimfiction that actually specialize in these kind of constructive criticism reviews that are aimed at helping authors improve their writing as well as groups that you should check out.

 

http://www.fimfiction.net/group/206880/the-fimfiction-bureau-of-imaginationists

 

http://www.fimfiction.net/group/197295/authors-helping-authors

 

http://www.fimfiction.net/group/27/the-proofreader-group

 

Also check out this thread.

 

https://mlpforums.com/topic/43854-mlp-forums-writing-centre/

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Jaxsie (Inactive)

Wow -- I didn't expect so many responses! ^^ Thank you all for taking the time to read and comment; looking at it now, I realized it is quite a lot to read, lol. 

 

@@ooBrony,

 

Thank you so much for those words of encouragement; it made my heart smile reading them! ^^ I hope, though, to give you the same encouragement in return. And in your own words, don't listen to what other people say, they are your stories, your world, and your imagination. ^^

 

 

@@PonyLaces,

 

Sure thing! Here you go: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/266586/granny-pie

 

But yeah this was my main problem. I feel that the down-votes wouldn't have bothered me so much, If people gave me some constructive criticism for me to improve. But I was just left in bewilderment thinking, Why didn't you like it? It can discourage you from writing more, because you worry about making the same mistake and that's the thing --  you have no idea what mistakes you made, haha. It's a vicious cycle of uncertainty and apprehension.

 

@,

 

Thanks a bunch for those links! I can't view the first one because it says that it has mature content and I personally don't have it enabled. But I will definitely utilize the rest! ^^

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Shanks

Thanks a bunch for those links! I can't view the first one because it says that it has mature content and I personally don't have it enabled. But I will definitely utilize the rest! ^^

There is this glitch going around on fimfiction where groups are auto tagged as NSFW and apparently that group is one of the ones that that may have been the case for. I assure you though that the group itself while it does allow NSFW stories is SFW. I will bring that to the attention of the admins of that group.

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Jaxsie (Inactive)

 

 

There is this glitch going around on fimfiction where groups are auto tagged as NSFW and apparently that group is one of the ones that that may have been the case for. I assure you though that the group itself while it does allow NSFW stories is SFW. I will bring that to the attention of the admins of that group.

 

Alrighty then! Thanks again! ^^

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