Just putting stuff out there

(this came out of a conversation in the comments on a previous post about an author threatening to stop updating a fic because of lack of engagement)

So there’s this idea that fic writers should write for themselves and not care too much about stats or engagement,

and i totally get the sentiment behind that. if writing becomes entirely about stats and external validation, something important does get lost - creative freedom and joy, conviction in your own writing

but i also think:

“i write for myself, but i post for others.”

because posting fic is not only self-expression. it’s social. ao3 is called an archive, but emotionally it often functions as a community space.

people post for connection, for participation, for others to bear witness to their pain and trauma and grief,

and i don’t think most people are asking to be admired so much as acknowledged. there’s something deeply human about wanting another person to encounter something that mattered to you and go:

“ok, yeah, I see what you were trying to say. I see you.”

especially because fanfic is often people processing very real feelings through fictional characters at a safe distance, one step removed,

and then uploading that deeply personal thing into a shared archive and hoping somebody else might connect with it.

And i think that’s why it hurts so much when you summon up the courage and post a fic into the void and you get nothing back,

and then it’s like,

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

And then it took me way too long to find these specific cookies when I'm most familiar with the Lumonde style.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

If this is your actual reaction to critique and not hyperbole to get your point across, you might want to read up on Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and see if that’s something you’d like to talk about with your doctor. This level of a reaction to beta comments feels extreme and might be a sign of something else going on, whether that’s RSD or something else. 

If that’s just hyperbole and you feel a sense of disappointment or dejection as a result of hearing critique then you might just need to talk to your beta reader about how you want that critique to come at you. Do you want a negative to be balanced out with a positive? Do you want a critique to come with a plan for how to fix the problem? Do you want it phrased as a question rather than as a statement?

We all have preferences when it comes to receiving feedback, and we all respond differently to different styles. If you’re receiving feedback in a form that doesn’t work for you, then try a different form and see if that works better. 

Another thing that’s important to remember is that these comments are not about you as a person, they’re about your writing. The person who is giving you this feedback is invested in making your writing better. They want you to succeed and they want you to tell the best version of your story possible, and their focus is on helping you do that. 

Nothing that we write is ever going to be perfect, and a first draft is even rougher. There’s no shame at all in needing to improve. If there’s nothing to work on, then there’s nothing to learn. Accepting critique means accepting an opportunity to do better next time, to learn a new technique or concept. Doing something badly means that you’re doing something that’s hard for you, and it’s only by working beyond our capabilities that we can improve. 

We often find that the things which hurt us the most are directly tied into our identity. If that is the case, then a critique of our work is no longer just that, but becomes a personal attack. It threatens the core of what we believe ourselves to be, which in turn may feel like "the end of the world". In a way, it truly contradicts something we consider a fundamental truth, the foundations of what we are. However, it is just the pain of bruised ego.

My advice would be to look into yourself. There's nothing shameful about it feeling this way. The question is: is that useful for you? Does it help you? Or does it cause you hurt and impede your growth?

Personally, I find that the more invested I am in the action ("writing") rather than being something ("I am a writer"), the easier it is for me to be detached and calm. It may sound counter-intuitive, but I think getting rid of the "I am a good writer" identity and the "I want to be a good writer" attachment is what made me a better writer. It removed the drive to be good and allowed me to just be, examine my work without any sense of failure, and discuss it with other people.

Of course, you still need some "chemistry" with your beta-reader, especially in regards to the plot itself. Outline what you're looking for in feedback and specify your boundaries. If you can't handle hearing about everything at once, tell them "I want to focus on xxx only" and specify whether (and how) you'd prefer for any other issues to be brought up. However, don't make them responsible for managing your feelings.

The point of setting boundaries isn't to prevent the situations in which you may feel hurt from occurring completely. It is to bring down their intensity to a level you can safely manage on your own. "Make sure the author never feels bad" and "be honest with the author about the issues in their workshop" are two distinct goals which, in certain situations, may contradict each other. If you can't handle feedback, you have to be aware that people will stop giving you their genuine thoughts and will focus on appeasing you instead.

Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??

Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??

gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"