minor earth major sky

Rambling today, because I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing all week.

There’s always some kind of discussion/vague argument going around about writing/creating for yourself versus creating for an audience. There are those who say “you should always create for yourself! If you’re not, you’re doing it totally wrong!” And there are those who say “When you’re an artist, of course you’re creating for an audience, it’s a human urge to want acknowledgement for the things you create!” As with pretty much every argument everywhere, my feelings about this have come to lie somewhere in the middle of these two. (It’s the eternal curse of being a Libra: always occupying the middle ground, never getting the pleasure of feeling righteous about one side or another. Heh.)

I probably come closer to the latter opinion than the former – because, it seems to me, the people who are the strongest proponents of “only ever create for yourself!” are usually people who get a lot of attention for their art anyway. But … there’s also the question of which came first. Do the people who get attention first get the attention because they’re doing something they’re passionate about? Or does having the attention first make it easier to follow your own passions? Again, I’m probably somewhere in the middle, especially when it comes to fannish creativity. It’s far easier to gather an audience for your art if your interests lean towards particular characters. A look at my AO3 stats definitely proves that – of the half dozen or so Dragon Age fics I’ve posted, all but two of them have hit counts that hover around 30. Two of them, though, have counts over 100 – the only two fics that feature either Anders or Fenris as half of the pairing. That doesn’t surprise me. I know I could get a lot more readers if I wrote either of them more often … but, while I like both of them, neither are on the list of DA characters I’m most passionate about.

Would I like to have more people reading my work? Of course I would! It feels good to see kudos, to see people reblogging my stuff, to see someone rec my story as something worth reading. Of course I would love to see more of it. But I’ve done the writing-for-popularity thing before, in prior fandoms. I’ve looked around and said “okay, well, if people like pairing X, why don’t I try writing it?” It’s an interesting writing exercise, trying to write a pairing you don’t believe in well enough to convince yourself. I do recommend it for that reason – those stories have made me a better writer, taught me how to build characters and relationships a little more fully – but I don’t recommend doing it for the attention. Every time I’ve written and posted stories featuring popular pairings I don’t necessarily enjoy, I’ve ended up just feeling bitter when those stories have (predictably) ended up getting far more attention than stories I was personally passionate about.

I think that anyone who says that they never worry about their own popularity either a) hasn’t been sharing their creations long enough to experience an attention drought or b) is lying to themselves or everyone else. Because every artist worries about whether someone will appreciate their work. Every single one. The trick, I think, is in how you deal with that little voice in your head. I’ve been known to let it cripple me on occasion. I’m not proud of that, but it’s part and parcel of being an artist who also deals with depression. But, recently, some kind of switch flipped in my brain. I looked at all the ideas I had in my head, just waiting to get out, and I said “okay, you know what? I have favorite characters. I have favorite fic tropes. Who cares if anyone thinks I’m just that crazy woman who always writes about Bethany Hawke? Or if they don’t understand my ships, or think my romances are dumb?” And I just started letting myself write what was in my head … and I’ve written more in the last 2-3 weeks than I have in AGES. I can’t remember the last time I wrote every single day for more than a week, or the last time the only thing I wanted to do when I got home from work was write. It feels amazing. I hope it lasts; I hope I don’t get a crash sometime soon that leaves me feeling hopeless about everything I’ve been doing.

The stuff I’m posting isn’t getting a ton of attention, not in the relative scheme of things. I’m excited if something I post gets more than 10 notes. But there are a half dozen or so of you who seem to really enjoy what I’m writing, and that makes me so happy, you don’t even know. It’s more than enough to keep me going. Would I be posting if I didn’t have those people encouraging me? Honestly, I don’t know. If it felt like I was shouting into the wind, I’d probably just write things privately and keep most of my stories in my head to entertain me. But I’ve found I don’t need the entirety of fandom on my side, or even all 80 of my Tumblr followers. I have a small handful of people who have told me they like what I do and are looking forward to more. And you know what? Right now, that’s enough to keep me grinning and writing and posting. 

I guess my point is, after all this babble … if you’re an artist, you’re always going to want people to pay attention and appreciate what you do. It’s natural, there’s nothing wrong with it, you’re not petty or pathetic for wanting those kudos. But don’t necessarily value quantity over quality, and know your audience well enough to know what your expectations for your audience should be. It makes for a much a happier fannish experience – or, at least, it does for me.  <3