So I've been meaning to post this for the last month or so, and I just keep putting it off. As I've mentioned previously, I haven't been in a great headspace, particularly writing-wise. Honestly, it's probably just being cooped up too much because of winter, SAD and all that. I've also properly fucked up my sleep schedule, which may be a factor as well. Regardless, because of that headspace, this post isn't going to be an especially positive one and if that's going to be an issue to read right now I recommend bookmarking it and coming back later when you've got the spoons. My inability to muster up a more positive version of all this is the primary reason I haven't written it and posted it before now, but I'm tired of just holding it back.
Before I get too deep into it I want to address that anyone who follows this blog may notice that I haven't actually posted any of my fiction here in a while. A big part of that is how little I've gotten done at all that I can post, but to be honest it's more because while I rarely get any engagement anywhere, I've never gotten any here. Posting stuff here is extra steps of formatting and uploading, and to be frank I'm reasonably certain anyone who reads this blog is likely to be familiar with my FurAffinity page anyways. And with that...
So, writing projects of varying sorts--
Conversion: Aside from some brainstorming, I haven't really started on the epilogue to the main story and I haven't really written anything new in a while. I started something new in the setting, like, last April or May for an anthology, but it just didn't come together in time for the deadline and it's sitting unfinished because I'm just having some issues bringing it together that I don't want to get into here other than to say that if it was as simple as take the cartridge out and blow on it'skip the tricky bit, write the rest, and come back to it later,' it'd be done by now. As for the 'main story,' the one I've been working on for too many years (which at some point, probably when I do a collected edition, I'm going to rename to better differentiate whether I'm talking about the setting or the story itself), the epilogue is largely stalled because of the lack of interest. I don't mean this as a slight towards anyone who is enjoying the story, but quite frankly I get so little feedback on it and I'm tired of begging people to even give the slightest indication that they even read it. Multiple times I've asked if there's anything in particular anyone wants to see in the epilogue, any questions they'd want answered, etc., and I've gotten no response or even acknowledgement.
So the epilogue is going to have to wait a bit, because to be honest it's sitting a little sour in my head right now. I will get to it, if for no other reason than to eventually say it's finished, but I can't say with any certainty when that will be.
I have been planning on digging up my stories that have appeared in FANG and ROAR and posting them here, as I'm 99% certain it's been long enough that I can do so. But that will involve some formatting and maybe figuring out an icon for those (or at least the adult ones, to differentiate them), because I'm increasingly feeling awkward using the same icon of Lawrence for all of my Conversion stuff but I don't have any other artwork reflecting the setting that I could use.
Song in the Dark: Maybe it's because it's a more personal project (for reasons I explain in the most recent chapter, but this has been going better in my head. I've got a roadmap as to where it's going, and I find it a little easier to get into. But as I just recently posted a chapter, I want to work on something else for a bit before going back to it.
My unnamed urban fantasy writing thing: Just as an acknowledgement, this has been a thing I've poked at when I just can't work on anything else. I don't know where it's going, if it's going, anything like that. I appreciate that I did eventually get some feedback on it after literally begging for weeks. I have rewritten that chapter a few times, though I've kept it to myself until and unless I decide what's going to happen with it. Maybe it'll just become another longer project I use for worldbuilding and then write some stuff in the setting that grows from it. I will say, though, that such a longer work wouldn't be posted chapter-by-chapter the way I did Conversion, because while I don't mind sharing stuff with friends who want to beta read, posting things publicly and then feeling limited in my ability to change them later as the project evolves was a major problem with Conversion.
What's to come: Honestly, I've been kicking around the idea for far too long without doing anything about it, but my next goal is to try and actually get some RPG stuff written, specifically some community content (meaning fan-made but authorized) for Æon and maybe some other games. I don't have any freelancing stuff on my plate and don't know when I will again because that's not entirely up to me. (As I've said in the past, that there are people willing to pay me to write things, very few have been eager to do so and I'm just bad at networking on top of that. I've got one more book I worked on still to be released, but after that I don't know when or if I'll be asked to work on anything again.)
I've talked about doing some RPG stuff with the Conversion setting in the past, likely just a Fate supplement with some setting material and guidelines, but I legitimately don't know right now if I can justify the effort. I could probably accomplish just as much by linking people to one or two books that already exist and letting them read the stories for the setting info they need.
Anyhow, that basically covers my current writing 'status,' and now I want to address something. I've alluded to this before, and I normally dance around it a lot when I publicly talk about my writing, but I get almost no feedback or response to my stories. On very rare occasions I have private conversations with friends where they'll express enthusiasm for a story or a particular character, and I do appreciate that, but other than that what you see online is what you get. I've had multiple conversations with people (those same people among them) who are legitimately shocked to find out that I don't regularly hear from readers but it's the truth. I just don't, either privately or publicly. I think the only time I've had someone I didn't already know initiate contact to privately talk about a story was an incident I recounted on my Twitter some time back, and the fact that I refer to it as an 'incident' tells you what you need to know there.
(I also have friends who've somehow gotten it into their heads that I regularly, privately, 'talk shop' with other writers, seemingly based on no other logic than we all co-exist on the internet. But aside from a week I spent at the RAWR workshop a few years ago, I rarely really talk with other writers -- even my fellow RAWR alumni -- and even then, when I do, it's almost never about writing itself. But that's a different, albeit related, issue.)
I usually don't talk about this because I don't want it to look like I'm devaluing what responses I do get to my work. But I get almost no feedback aside from what you see publicly, and much of the private feedback is actively solicited from people beta reading. As of this writing, in the last... oh, let's just be arbitrary about this and go back to when I started posting Song in the Dark in February 2019... in the last 3 years, ten chapters in all between Song in the Dark, Conversion, and my writing experiment, I've received four comments on story stuff I've posted from as many different people. Two of those I got on the experiment, and only after a couple of weeks of posting the link pretty much anyplace I thought I could get eyeballs on it, actively requesting people come and check it out. If I add SoFurry's statistics for the same period (though I actually stopped posting there a while ago for a few reasons), I add two more comments actually about the stories from two more people, one of whom was a beta reader. A couple of times in the past I've had one person leave comments on a couple of different Conversion chapters, but I've never really had 'regular' readers over a long period of time. Or if I have, they haven't said anything.
(Incidentally, I don't get a lot of specific feedback on my RPG writing either, usually because I don't wind up working on the 'exciting' portions of books. Generally if there's already a discussion happening about a book I worked on and someone realizes I'm there, they might say something. But I don't get people hitting me up on Twitter or Discord to tell me they liked a thing I did in a given book. Pretty much all the specific feedback I get comes from developers I've worked with, and that feedback is literally part of their job.)
Like I said, I don't normally talk about this, but it's sat heavy on me and I probably should have gotten it off my chest a while ago. I appreciate those of you who have shared your thoughts on my writing, and despite my frustration I do appreciate those of you who read at all but don't say anything, even if I'd really rather know that I'm being read. And I know that part of the problem is that I don't post more regularly, so it's probably harder to maintain interest. But part of the reason I don't post most regularly is the lack of interest shown from other people. It makes me feel like my energies could be better spent elsewhere.
I don't know if there's a good solution aside from just 'keep hammering at the keyboard like an infinite number of monkeys until I get lucky.' I wish there was a good solution. All I know is that I don't have much more than this, and some days I get to explore a fantastical world and lead some characters through an adventure, and other days it feels like masturbation but with less payoff.
I also know that this post has gone on too long, and I can't think of any clever sign-off other than to thank you all for your time and whatever thoughts you've had to share on my work.
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