Creative Endeavour

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

This... is a rant. It's full of sarcasm, vitriol and deep seated annoyance

I post products of my creativity on these forums. I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I do. In fact I've actually been posting a script for a half hour hard-boiled detective show with dinosaurs. That could be a great read. Some people on this forum have read it, but if I didn't watch the 'views' count, I wouldn't know, because apparently the people reading my stuf have no hands! So ofcourse they can't type a response or critique or even a simple little comment. It's amazing they are even able to log in.

I also write short stories. Again, the same issue hits me square between the eyes. Granted, after the second story, I got a good flurry of responses, which was fantastic. But then I wrote another story and got no feedback. Then I wrote another story and got no feedback. then I wrote another story and got no feedback. Then I wrote another story and got no feedback. On one of them I even wrote

I would like to know if anyone is actually reading this stuff... probably not.

A while ago, I had a poetry thread, and it was a great thread. I'm rather proud of what I wrote and indeed used half of them in my first year university assignment, getting a first. 14 out of 15 marks. How many people read it?... One person... Aquawolf. I am massively grateful for his comments and support, and indeed when he left, I posted nine poems before I realized that he isnt coming back and nobody else is reading. In fact the last post said

yikes, havent done this in ages... probably cus i was distracted... doesnt matter anyway, nobody reads this stuff.

Now my art thread has had far more activity and I thank you all for that, but when I go through 6 posts without anyone saying anything... well... it starts to get a bit familiar.

The main reason I post these things is to get feedback, to get praise, to get criticism, to get anything at all. It doesnt matter if it's scathing unfounded attacks or gushing highly exaggerated praise. I do not post them to find a silent audience. I'm not asking every person to reply to every word I've written, but at least something, anything. I'm just sick of this.

You know what, I'm done with posting stories on this site when I get nothing out of it. I'm done.

[Self-sain]

I'm sorry you fell that way I know what you mean by that it sucks when they look but don't comment you just fell as if they they might of accidentally put it there and if it where to be complete crap well no one would even notice

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

And the thing is, quite a few people write on this site, expecting feedback, but then they dont give feedback to anyone else. One can't expect people to fall over themselves to reply to one, when one doesn't do the same for others. I try to give feedback to every story. I don't manage it all but I try, and then I get nothing back.

By the way, thanks for giving feedback to my short story.

[Self-sain]

It was no problem and I want give people more feed back but sometimes I just enter have tine and I'm to critical

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

right, i'm deleting my writing threads. No point them being on here. I know posting such an announcement on here is begging for people to tell me not to give up or whatever, but frankly i do want that, because i want to believe that people actually like my stuff and want to read my stuff and don't want it to disappear, but sod it because nobody's gonna do that.

except maybe sain, and thank you sain, for giving a damn.

[Self-sain]

curse you for seeing me come T.T all you need is one person to see your work for it to be acknowledged, some people don't take a liking in reading to much and if your writing for an audience wouldn't you want to have an audience of one that cares then an audience of 100 that don't even care

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

You've commented on like.. what... one story? two at most.  Now I'm not asking you to read and comment on all my stuff, I'm just pointing out that if all i've got is one person reading one story out of six? eight stories? then what's the point? I used to have an audience of one with my poetry all those months ago. Then that person disappeared and i must have posted twelve more in the hope that somebody would say something. Nobody ever did.
my poetry is not what I focus on. I focus on fiction. Short stories, novels, scripts and the like. I'm trying to make a career out of it, which means making sure my stuff does not get stolen. So do you think I should post so many stories on this site where there is no protection against thieves just so I can get one person to comment on one story? It's just not worth my trouble and my commitment. I've half a mind to stop commenting on anyone else's stories.

I mean I've said this many times, but all i want is for people to comment on my stuff. to say it's good or say it's bad or whatever, but people wont give me the time of day. I'm not asking you to comment on everything I write because I know, you have a life, you don't have the time. but you'd think somebody else would say three words. "It was bad" or "it was good", I'm not even getting that much! 3 words!

It's not worth the trouble.

[Self-sain]

i fell you there and i know what you mean i always had a fear that some one might steal my crap because I wouldn't mind being a writer but at last its your choice and if you want you could just pm me with anything that you would like a critique on and you wouldn't have to worry about it being stolen.. hopefully I'm kidding i wouldn't do that

[WingedZephyr]

Sure, it sucks when you don't get feedback on something you create. It happens to just about everyone at some point or another. But comments are optional, no one can be forced to reply to your posts. Likewise, posting your work is also optional. If you want to post it, more power to you; if you don't want to post anything anymore, you're free to do that too.

Although if you want my opinion... If you're going to keep writing anyway, it doesn't hurt to post them while remembering that you may not get the kind of feedback you wish for. If you don't post anything at all, there will be zero chance of ever getting any feedback.


Also, this kind of issue might also be due to the fact that a lot of people on the forum spend most of their time in the RP boards, and they don't roam elsewhere as much. If you have any suggestions for bringing more traffic to the creative boards, you're more than welcome to offer them up.

[Asia Kali Yusufzai]

The thing is, I'm pretty sure there is enough traffic. About 5-8 people view every new thing i post. Even if you count mods, or myself doing a double view, that's still 3-4. I dont look at my own work much if ever because i dont want to mess up the view counter, so somebody is reading this stuff.
Plus there are plenty of writers on this site, and also other people get feedback on this site. Granted, most of the time its me, and I used to wonder why there was a writing section at all, but recently the feedback has been increasing and I've had none of that increase.

Writing will always have less of an audience because people want quick visual/audio things to admire, that's why the art section gets a lot more attention. That's just the nature of writing, but the writing section is not dead. People do read, people do write, there are people there, you'd think there would be SOME feedback.

And actually yes it does hurt to post writing up here because I'm taking a risk. It takes little effort to post things, it takes less effort to copy and paste. Next thing you know, my stories are in a magazine under someone else's name. When i take risks I aim for reward. That reward being any type of feedback, good or bad. That risk hasn't paid off so there's no real point in taking it.

So frankly I'm better off not posting anything.