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AO3 Fic Stats for 2016
Dec. 22nd, 2016 11:30 amI 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.
( Read more... )
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.
( Read more... )
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.
