Bramblethorn
Sleep-deprived
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
- Posts
- 18,197
I know, I know. Pot. Kettle. Black.
Why is it, that I feel (I know) I’m getting better as a writer, but the reaction to my stuff is getting worse? It feels like the two things are inversely proportional.
I don't think reactions to my work have gotten worse overall, but I'm pretty sure there are readers who prefer my earlier stories here to the later ones.
I haven't read your stories (please don't take that personally! I very rarely get time to read stories here these days) so you'll have to gauge whether any of this is relevant to you. But for me, I think part of it is that writing stories has provoked me to think more about storytelling, and my personal standards for "good story" have shifted in ways that don't always match what the fabled Average Reader is looking for.
My first story here was a HEA romance, and there are plenty of readers (me included) who enjoy reading that kind of story. But I don't want to tell it over and over. Sometimes I want to kick against the conventions - okay, what if I write a story about two people who are very fond of one another and have some great sex, but ultimately decide that they aren't going to spend their lives together? What if one of the characters is a sex worker who doesn't need to be rescued by a knight in shining armour? What if the main character has a romance but it's not the centre of the story? Can I write a love story that follows through until dementia and death do us part, where the loved one has some really unappealing personality traits? Can I do all those things, and still have stories that leave (many) readers feeling glad that they read them?
Those are higher-challenge stories. Readers aren't always going to see those self-imposed challenges. Even if they do, that doesn't guarantee it's what they wanted to read. So I get some readers who will tell me, at considerable length, how much the ending of the new story sucked and how I should make it more like the old one. I've seen the same for other authors that I've edited for.