An honest chat.
Hi, everyone, if you’re reading this, it means that you care (or at least you’re curious lol) so in return, I’ll be as honest as possible with you because I think we all deserve that.
I’m not quite back yet, I still don’t feel motivated to start posting again, so I’m taking the end of the year to rest and watch TV and go out and just live because I feel like so much of this past year was dedicated to writing and posting that I wanted the rest of this month to do everything I held back from.
Having that said, I think things need to change around here. Things that you most likely won’t even see, as the changes I’m making start within myself. I have a few points I want to make with this, so please bear with me.
1 - One thing I always lived by was the fact that I write for myself. That’s the only way I know how to write. It’s to come up with plots, characters and stories that I love and that I will be proud of, first and foremost. And over the past few months I have noticed a few worries coming into my brain, making me second guess what I write and what I put out. “Is this too much? Will people hate this ending? Will people think it doesn’t make sense?” and that’s the type of question that doesn’t come from someone who is writing for herself.
One example of this is when I got a couple of comments saying they didn’t like I used pictures in ldyk (pictures of a korean girl), as in that took away the purpose of writing a Y/N story. And that made me pull back from using more pictures, or mostly using pictures that didn’t show face and etc.
I know not everyone will like the fact that I used pictures, because a big part of readers aren’t korean, don’t have long, dark hair, dark eyes, light skin, etc. I don’t look like that either (at all), but my choice in choosing to still do it wasn’t to force you guys to picture yourselves as someone you aren’t, but to make sense plot wise. Yn from ldyk is korean, and to work as a playmate, she had to look a certain way for it to make sense culturally. But ANYWAYS I’m rambling and this is not the point.
THE POINT IS, you are all allowed to have your opinions, to not like something I chose for the story, you don’t even have to read it. No hard feelings. But what bothers me is that I got bothered enough to change. To stop using pictures, to use less of them, etc.
My worry with this is not to disregard your opinions, but you can never please everyone. You can’t because no one will ever agree with everything. No matter what I change, someone will always not like it, or won’t agree with it. So no matter what I choose to change, I still won’t be doing what 100% of you would like to see. And in the process of trying, I start to lose my own identity, my own original ideas and the things that I enjoy about a story.
So I want to get back to writing for myself. Not to say I won’t listen to you guys (I always open up polls and ask you guys what you would like best and etc), but I need to start writing with myself in mind or I won’t want to write at all.
2 - I started to wonder why I’m posting. What do I get out of it? Because I’m not after notes and I’m not after followers and I’m not after being popular. And there’s so much work that comes into posting and making banners, and editing, and beta reading, and I post three times a week; and sometimes extras and specials. And for what?
The answer to that is simple: To share with you guys, to bring you a good place to run off to if you need a distraction, so that we can all escape our reality a few times a week, so we can dream and imagine these scenarios and just feel connected somehow. And that’s worth it.
BUT. And here it comes, the likes/reblogs talk.
When all my posts get are likes, that’s nice and all. But it doesn’t make the work I put so much thought into spread, it doesn’t really do anything. Likes don’t do anything. Reblogs do. Comments let me know what you guys think, make me feel like I’m not posting into the void. Because if that’s the case and there’s no one reading it, then what’s the point of having all that trouble?
I’m not asking you to start reblogging or commenting if it’s not your thing, if you don’t have the time to. All I’m saying is that I’m not getting back what I wish to get? Which is knowing people like what I share, that is working as it was intended –a distraction, something nice, somewhere to escape to–. Because I could just write it all and keep it to myself and not have all this trouble, and I would still feel just as fulfilled. I would feel just as good.
Now I need to open a very big space here, because I do have a few readers who ALWAYS comment and ALWAYS reblog and I could name your urls by heart. And those few are the ones who kept me going up until this point and I’m so thankful for you.
3 - I realize I have been putting a lot of pressure on myself to keep putting out content. From december of last year until now, I have put out series after series after series. A story wasn’t even done and I’d already announce what was coming next. And that just gives me so much anxiety and makes me worry that I won’t have anything else to post after this series is done and etc. And that makes me feel pressured to just FORCE things out, and not sitting with a story, not really resting, just writing like a machine so I won’t let anyone down. And I don’t want to keep doing that anymore. I don’t want to feel so pressured I freeze.
I want to let my brain fixate on many stories, come up with different ideas and I want to work on all of them. At my pace. In a way that I will enjoy. I want to take breaks between series and I want to breathe.
I want to do what I love, the way that I love. If that means no one will ever get to read it, that’s fine too. I don’t think I’ll stop posting, while I still have stories written (ldyk and another JK one), but I don’t want to put pressure on myself about getting series out right after those ones. Because it takes 10 minutes for you to read, but sometimes it takes days for a chapter to be written.
Anyways, if you read this far, thank you and I’m sorry for the rant lol