![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkI'm trying to blog more on various platforms. I'm trying to talk about what I'm doing, and connect with people, and share my work in a way that feels personal and not like just blatant spam. But it's a hard line to walk sometimes.
People like to feel close to the people creating the content they consume. There's a reason that paparazzi and celebrity gossip rags are things. And many very successful small-time creators have had great success with sharing their lives as well as their work. It can be very natural, honestly. It's seldom that one's work is completely divorced from one's personal life. I know I write my own problems, thoughts, experiences and kinks into my stories constantly. Even the wildest of my fantasies tends to be in some way drawing on real life experience.
But it can be a very fine line to walk, because not everybody who reads my writing or likes my plushes or enjoys my art is sensitive and understanding about my issues. I'm an absolute fruit loop and the very specialist of special snowflakes, and I freely admit that, but it doesn't keep it from stinging when somebody is a dick about any of it. Or when somebody is a dick about my work. I'm currently not even visiting FimFiction, the My Little Pony writing site, because several people in a row being rude and demanding about my writing just made it too hard to want to even participate there. I will go back eventually, I have more pony stuff to post, and that's in some ways the cruelest thing about all this. I can't escape it. I *can't* stop writing. I've tried! It doesn't work. The stories want out. And now that I'm making a little money doing it, I have even more motivation to keep at it. But in order to succeed I need to promote it, I need to be present, active, cheerful, professional, constantly reminding people I exist so that they'll buy my books or join my Patreon or commission me to write something or whatever, and like any customer-facing position, it can be absolutely soul-sucking to try and keep up that facade when that's not what you really feel.
And hey, people like to feel close to the people creating the content they consume, right? Why not share how you really feel?
Sometimes it's okay to do so. But sometimes I'm not sure it is. I have a feeling that my latest melt down over on Fimfic has probably cost me some followers. It certainly hasn't gained me any. Yet I do feel those feelings, I do have those frustrations, I have had those experiences. Pretending that I'm always happy, always doing well, everything's always going great and I'm always a professional, and never want to strangle my readers, really is awful. I hate that kind of facade.
Yet I really have no idea how to find a good middle ground between being "That train-wreck of a person" and being a soulless business drone, all plastic smile and "buy my book!"
It's hard.
People like to feel close to the people creating the content they consume. There's a reason that paparazzi and celebrity gossip rags are things. And many very successful small-time creators have had great success with sharing their lives as well as their work. It can be very natural, honestly. It's seldom that one's work is completely divorced from one's personal life. I know I write my own problems, thoughts, experiences and kinks into my stories constantly. Even the wildest of my fantasies tends to be in some way drawing on real life experience.
But it can be a very fine line to walk, because not everybody who reads my writing or likes my plushes or enjoys my art is sensitive and understanding about my issues. I'm an absolute fruit loop and the very specialist of special snowflakes, and I freely admit that, but it doesn't keep it from stinging when somebody is a dick about any of it. Or when somebody is a dick about my work. I'm currently not even visiting FimFiction, the My Little Pony writing site, because several people in a row being rude and demanding about my writing just made it too hard to want to even participate there. I will go back eventually, I have more pony stuff to post, and that's in some ways the cruelest thing about all this. I can't escape it. I *can't* stop writing. I've tried! It doesn't work. The stories want out. And now that I'm making a little money doing it, I have even more motivation to keep at it. But in order to succeed I need to promote it, I need to be present, active, cheerful, professional, constantly reminding people I exist so that they'll buy my books or join my Patreon or commission me to write something or whatever, and like any customer-facing position, it can be absolutely soul-sucking to try and keep up that facade when that's not what you really feel.
And hey, people like to feel close to the people creating the content they consume, right? Why not share how you really feel?
Sometimes it's okay to do so. But sometimes I'm not sure it is. I have a feeling that my latest melt down over on Fimfic has probably cost me some followers. It certainly hasn't gained me any. Yet I do feel those feelings, I do have those frustrations, I have had those experiences. Pretending that I'm always happy, always doing well, everything's always going great and I'm always a professional, and never want to strangle my readers, really is awful. I hate that kind of facade.
Yet I really have no idea how to find a good middle ground between being "That train-wreck of a person" and being a soulless business drone, all plastic smile and "buy my book!"
It's hard.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 09:01 pm (UTC)Hugs, if desired.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 04:32 pm (UTC)I mean, fuck 'em if they can't understand the whole thing, but also they pay money that helps with that whole life thing.
Which sucks.