AO3 Fic Stats for 2016
Dec. 22nd, 2016 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI just posted the last chapter of A Wise Decision (the Boar Ganon story), thus tying up (almost) all of the loose ends of my fanfic for this year.
According to the metrics tool on AO3, I posted almost 100,000 words of fic during 2016. For comparison, here is a screenshot of my statistics for 2015, followed by my statistics for 2016.
2015
2016
Even though my productivity has increased, and although I like to think that my skill level has increased as well, the numbers of hits and kudos I've received this year have decreased significantly from the numbers for last year.
These statistics are calculated according to the activity on the stories posted during a given calendar year, not according to overall activity. One might therefore argue that the stories I posted in 2015 have had an extra year to get hits and kudos. This is valid, but it also tends to be the nature of AO3 for stories not to get many hits or kudos after they're first posted (unless they've reached a certain threshold of popularity and/or are bookmarked by a lot of big name fans). Basically, then, what you see is what you get, and I just didn't do as well in 2016 as I did in 2015.
I'm pretty sure I deleted the post where I confessed the high level of my social anxiety on Tumblr (ETA: Nope, it's still here), but this is what I meant when I wrote that I haven't managed to build an audience for my work through effort and improvement; rather, I've lost whatever audience I had without managing to win over new readers. If I can be allowed to be self-indulgent for a moment, perhaps it's okay for me to say that this fills me with disappointment and despair. I'm not in a happy place right now.
I did my best, but I think it might be a good idea to take a break from writing fic for a while. What I'd like to do is not to stop writing fic altogether, but rather to cut way back on the time I spend on it and hold off on posting anything for a few months. What I'm going to do instead is to devote my efforts to the Wind Waker project; I'm going to get serious about publishing parts of it outside of fandom as I work on the larger book manuscript.
Just like any other human being, I need encouragement, support, and validation, and the reason I write is to add a different perspective to an ongoing conversation. Although I'm not giving up on fandom, it just doesn't seem like the best place to find a community and achieve my goals at the moment. It's going to be extremely difficult to watch the fandom move on without me and perhaps even experience a resurgence in activity when I leave, but I need to focus on my professional development and gradually ease myself back into a healthy headspace where my sense of self-worth isn't dependent on how many hits and kudos I get on AO3 or how many notes I get on Tumblr.
According to the metrics tool on AO3, I posted almost 100,000 words of fic during 2016. For comparison, here is a screenshot of my statistics for 2015, followed by my statistics for 2016.
2015
2016
Even though my productivity has increased, and although I like to think that my skill level has increased as well, the numbers of hits and kudos I've received this year have decreased significantly from the numbers for last year.
These statistics are calculated according to the activity on the stories posted during a given calendar year, not according to overall activity. One might therefore argue that the stories I posted in 2015 have had an extra year to get hits and kudos. This is valid, but it also tends to be the nature of AO3 for stories not to get many hits or kudos after they're first posted (unless they've reached a certain threshold of popularity and/or are bookmarked by a lot of big name fans). Basically, then, what you see is what you get, and I just didn't do as well in 2016 as I did in 2015.
I'm pretty sure I deleted the post where I confessed the high level of my social anxiety on Tumblr (ETA: Nope, it's still here), but this is what I meant when I wrote that I haven't managed to build an audience for my work through effort and improvement; rather, I've lost whatever audience I had without managing to win over new readers. If I can be allowed to be self-indulgent for a moment, perhaps it's okay for me to say that this fills me with disappointment and despair. I'm not in a happy place right now.
I did my best, but I think it might be a good idea to take a break from writing fic for a while. What I'd like to do is not to stop writing fic altogether, but rather to cut way back on the time I spend on it and hold off on posting anything for a few months. What I'm going to do instead is to devote my efforts to the Wind Waker project; I'm going to get serious about publishing parts of it outside of fandom as I work on the larger book manuscript.
Just like any other human being, I need encouragement, support, and validation, and the reason I write is to add a different perspective to an ongoing conversation. Although I'm not giving up on fandom, it just doesn't seem like the best place to find a community and achieve my goals at the moment. It's going to be extremely difficult to watch the fandom move on without me and perhaps even experience a resurgence in activity when I leave, but I need to focus on my professional development and gradually ease myself back into a healthy headspace where my sense of self-worth isn't dependent on how many hits and kudos I get on AO3 or how many notes I get on Tumblr.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-26 04:33 am (UTC)*hugs*
(I think you're rad, for whatever that's worth.)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-26 07:27 pm (UTC)but I have no sympathy for them whatsoever.This is completely tangential, but I have a hypothesis that video game fandoms tend to be more visually oriented, while the tv and movie people love their fic. It's routine for me to see fic for fandoms like The Hobbit and Winter Soldier get hundreds of notes, while even popular Overwatch writers will get maybe three dozen notes on their fic posts.
I'm thinking about putting more time into developing my drawing. Visual art seems to be the commodity that attracts fandom currency on Tumblr, and if nothing else it would be cool to create gift art for people's fic. Drawing is hard, but honestly, so is writing.
(And I think you are super cool too!!)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 04:22 am (UTC)....that's fascinating to me. I had a lengthy post a ways back about game ficcing and why there aren't as many of us as TV/movie/book ficcers. That being said, I personally am not a visual arts person; fanart is nice and very occasionally my ideas are 100% visual-art oriented, but mostly I prefer words.
(awww, thank you!)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-30 09:35 pm (UTC)I 100% agree with everything you wrote, and your insights have helped me to better understand the more visually oriented nature of game fandom. Although a lot of artists apologize for not being to play games (because of the precisely the reasons you listed), they're still intrigued by the visual design, and many listen to let's play videos while they work.
From what I've seen, there are a ton of Zelda artists in particular who have never played a single game in the series but love, for example, the Game Grumps playthrough of Wind Waker, which they will have watched in its entirety multiple times. They may not know enough about the game's story or the series lore to read or appreciate fic, but they still adore the characters enough to draw fan art.
Also, I hate to say this, because I in no way mean to imply that artists are stupid, but I get the feeling that a lot of more visually oriented people don't enjoy reading fiction in the same way that more verbally oriented people do. In order for a writer to develop her craft, she has to read, and most people I know who write compulsively began doing so because they read compulsively. Meanwhile, artists devote their share of time to drawing, and perhaps they don't develop the same sort of "slicing a knife into butter" ease of entry into fiction that many writers do. Like, their entire "currency of pleasure" is different. This is another topic for another post, but what I'm trying to say is that your essay makes so much sense to me, and it's given me a lot of new ideas. Thank you!!
no subject
Date: 2016-12-30 10:27 pm (UTC)most of the people I know who write compulsively began doing so because the read compulsively yep hi this is me always. I can't not read, the same way I can't not write. And on the flip side of that coin, I fundamentally do not have the visual nature of art. I can create things that are diagrammed for me (for example, I am quite good at counted cross stitch patterns, which at the end of the day are merely executing something that another person designed rather than true creative impulse--in the sense of "making something new"--of my own), but drawing and the like--I'm really not there. I did manage a quite good charcoal still life once in high school, and I am sure I could spend the time to learn technique and become acceptably proficient with visual art, but that's not how my mind works. I don't envision scenes as motion and color and setting in my head; I follow them as narrative threads. Which is why I'm always fascinated by good artists and how they create images from nothing.
I'm glad to be a source of new ideas, and I'm really interested in this post you propose. *chinprop*