A writing post for a change

[shapinglight]

I haven't done one of these for a while, so I thought I might as well.

Occasionally, I look at the hits on the stories I've posted on Ao3. Some continue to go up, though slowly (doubt I'll ever reach the heights of some stories I've seen on there, with almost 1000 hits. I'll be lucky to get 100 on any of mine), others seem firmly stuck pretty much where they started.



I'm assuming that this has more to do with people's character preferences than anything, because otherwise I can't explain why Venus and Mars, one of my own favourites, and (IMO) one of my best stories stays stuck on 11 hits, where it's been for ages, while others, which I don't consider as good, go upwards. Or maybe people just don't like historical stories? I posted a couple of short things a few weeks back. One - a Giles piece - has garnered 15 hits, while the other, a 1000 word Fanged Four tale has only four (and was stuck on one for ages).

I dunno. History is of the then, or course, whereas we are all in the now.

Anyway, where current writing goes, I forced myself to start revising my penultimate Spike/Giles season 7 story the other day. I managed the first two sections, because they didn't actually need much work, but when I got to the part where I know I have to start re-writing whole scenes, I came over all tired and gave up. :(

I was hoping to finish the entire series for brutti_ma_buoni's letsgetitdone challenge. Now, I think I'll be lucky to finish just this part.

As for the story I started on sb_fag_ends last month, I've written one more part, but I don't want to post it. I want to write two or three more, or even more than that, before I consider doing so.

And the whole experience is making me feel all over again that I should have stuck to my long ago resolution never to start posting a WIP until I know I can finish it.

:Gloom:

Finally, I saw the first part of a story posted the other day. I thought I might glance at it, but then read in the blurb that Character X was hardly in the story, and that the author hated the Character-X/Character-Y pairing. This didn't seem to me a good way to advertise a story (unless you only want other Character-X/Character-Y haters to read it). What do you think?

Comments

[killerweasel.livejournal.com]

That'll explain your low hit counts. If someone searches for lets say 'Spike/Angel', they pop up by date posted. If you upload something from 2008, it isn't going to show up anywhere near the start of the list, like something from 2013 will.

What I do with the old ones, is I sometimes add an author's note saying 'originally posted on LJ 2004', just so they know it isn't really new, but it will show up as a new thing.

[shapinglight]

Heh! I never realised that. Thanks for the info.

I'll have to go back and do a lot of editing.