Ever wonder if Lit is just not for you?

[RoperTrace]

I'm pretty certain that Lit is not for me. But I keep posting the occasional story. And my six (or is it seven?) readers - and a few of their friends - keep turning up. And cheering. And Laurel (well, an automated system, actually; but I do like the idea of a human touch) bestows a Red H. And then on day two or three, a squadron of one-bombers flies in and practices blind carpet bombing. With the Red H safely obliterated, the one-bombers move on; the increase in readership slows to a mere dribble; but life goes on. And, in between bouts of proper writing, I polish off another shorty, and post another entry on SamScribble's home page. Don't fret, seacrest. It's just how it works.

Red H's? I had six or seven at one point for probably over 15 years. Then I joined the forum, they disintegrated like sand against the tide. Now maybe one, if it still stands. That's Lit life.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Well it does help put things in perspective.
The prospect of low scores on an attempt to pen erotic fiction versus.... a helluva a lot more severe situations.

The Draft Riots fourteen years later were a hell of a lot worse. Anyway, "the prospect of low scores" . . . There's some concept in Buddism, not that I know much about that, that suggests not indifference, but this quote seems about right. "The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go." I'm sure that there are others here who have a better understanding of it all.

So I'm not trying to boast, but I submitted a story to another site this afternoon. They have a very strange scoring system over there but I can make comparisons anyway. So it's only about 4,800 words and it feels like I've been working on it for about a month, but I forgot. (It actually fits into the middle of a long-standing series, so I already knew a lot about the characters.) I read through it one more time, and then - I submitted it. They post things really quickly (I doubt they even use bots), so it's already there to be read.

So that's it, that's done. Now I can do something else

 

[gunhilltrain]

Red H's? I had six or seven at one point for probably over 15 years. Then I joined the forum, they disintegrated like sand against the tide. Now maybe one, if it still stands. That's Lit life.

That's really strange. Usually if they survive the first week or so, they will be there indefinitely, for years I mean. I can't imagine what you've said on the forums. I know I've slung quite a bit of BS on them almost since I joined the site.

 

[XerXesXu]

That's really strange. Usually if they survive the first week or so, they will be there indefinitely, for years I mean. I can't imagine what you've said on the forums. I know I've slung quite a bit of BS on them almost since I joined the site.

I said, 'You are what you write.' The spillover was immediate. I'd be fascinated to know what they write.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Red H's? I had six or seven at one point for probably over 15 years. Then I joined the forum, they disintegrated like sand against the tide. Now maybe one, if it still stands. That's Lit life.

I don't think there's always a correlation between forum activity and reader negativity. It's safe to say I'm an active AH member (but not on other forums except on occasion the Feedback Forum), with over a hundred stories/chapters, of which 75% are Red H - and overall my story file has crept upwards over time.

I suspect "category of choice" might make a difference - I don't really have one and I don't go near LW - and participation in other forums possibly attracts trolls.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I said, 'You are what you write.' The spillover was immediate. I'd be fascinated to know what they write.

Just curious: who do you mean by "they?" Everything that we as authors write is there for all to see. I guess you mean the readers who make those comments? Their comments are usually visible for any particular story unless the comments are purged first. I guess that 95% of the comments I ever got are still there. I like the ones where somebody gets nostalgic about some location I've mentioned. I was surprised to get one such comment from a person who remembered being at Garret Mountain (actually a big hill) in Paterson, NJ.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't think there's always a correlation between forum activity and reader negativity. It's safe to say I'm an active AH member (but not on other forums except on occasion the Feedback Forum), with over a hundred stories/chapters, of which 75% are Red H - and overall my story file has crept upwards over time.

I suspect "category of choice" might make a difference - I don't really have one and I don't go near LW - and participation in other forums possibly attracts trolls.

The "General Board" and the "Politics Board" can get rather weird, but those people don't seem that interested in the stories on here. The "Playground" is mostly goofy fun.

 

[XerXesXu]

Just curious: who do you mean by "they?" Everything that we as authors write is there for all to see. I guess you mean the readers who make those comments? Their comments are usually visible for any particular story unless the comments are purged first. I guess that 95% of the comments I ever got are still there. I like the ones where somebody gets nostalgic about some location I've mentioned. I was surprised to get one such comment from a person who remembered being at Garret Mountain (actually a big hill) in Paterson, NJ.

'by Anonymous user on 04/29/2022

Seeing that you are what you write, which end of the fisting do you prefer?'

+ a uni-bombing pass, all red Hs disappeared overnight.

I had to search for that, but on the positive side, I've also discovered a number of comments I've never seen before, due to my inattention.

Here's another - same date.

'by mamiGatita  on 04/29/2022

I love how the I can find the same three or four names adding your stories to the favorites list. And that your praising comments either come from those names or anonymous.'

 

[RoperTrace]

That's really strange. Usually if they survive the first week or so, they will be there indefinitely, for years I mean. I can't imagine what you've said on the forums. I know I've slung quite a bit of BS on them almost since I joined the site.

That was my exact experience as well for over 15 years. Joining the forums effect was quite noticeable. And I only leave comments on stories, with my user name, never anon.

 

[ElectricBlue]

No doubt with over 75% Red H,s and 500 stories, you're an excellent writer.

When you've been here close to 20 years as a writer, and mostly write in the same categories, and then a couple years back join the forum, it was very noticeable. And I don't tangle with people on politics on any board. On one of my longest stories, I was literally online when it was approved and within a few minutes, it earned a 1. That anon poster read over 20,000 words and hit a 1 in a few minutes? He or she followed the next part 4 or p5 of same story, and told me they were giving me another 1 in the comments. And my other stories that weren't above 4.5 remained at their same level and even rose in some cases. I only have 20 stories, and approaching 2MM views, and at the time I joined the forum, all of my stories' ratings were steady and many including the H's were rising ever so slightly.
In spite of the above, I love what Lit provides, and wouldn't change much, if anything.

Not 500 stories/chapters - as of today, 108.

I can't account for it - is BDSM a hostile category, or have you "broken their rules", perhaps?

 

[gunhilltrain]

'by Anonymous user on 04/29/2022

Seeing that you are what you write, which end of the fisting do you prefer?'

+ a uni-bombing pass, all red Hs disappeared overnight.

I had to search for that, but on the positive side, I've also discovered a number of comments I've never seen before, due to my inattention.

Here's another - same date.

'by mamiGatita  on 04/29/2022

I love how the I can find the same three or four names adding your stories to the favorites list. And that your praising comments either come from those names or anonymous.'

I'll take your word for it, but maybe I'm not that surprised after all. I've been here for four years, but I've been dabbling around online for about twenty. And I've seen plenty of weird things and plenty of nasty comments. This particular board was temporarily shut down a while ago because people were calling each other terrorists and threatening to contact the FBI:

http://www.subchat.com/subchat.asp

I mean, "What Happened to Brooklyn's Trolleybuses?" But you can see politics creeping in with comments about Bernie Sanders and his position on the national rail strike (which had been scheduled for today). The particular pretext for the shutdown was the 9/11 attacks, which set off some extreme comments among the members. (I don't think I was reading it then.)

So here with have Lit with all kinds of issues coming up regarding sexuality (gender relations, orientation, transgenderism, etc.) and many other things that people have strong opinions about. With tens of thousands of them at their keyboards, this is the result. Not that I excuse it, but it's inevitable.

 

[t_h_seacrest]

any "creative" activity (I suppose Lit qualifies) requires some distance, some "dispassionate" reasoning, between the creator and whatever is being worked on.

For my purposes here, I'll just say this is what I needed to hear. It would align with what a few others have said about coming and going, tossing this down here or something else somewhere else. A kind of casual, slack, distance attitude/mindset. That's the main thing I need to do I guess.

Hey I'll admit it: when I wrote and published here over the course of several years and my scores remained in the lower 4s... sometimes it didn't bother me. But sometimes it did. Because this is something I am very interested in and greatly enjoy thinking up stuff and trying to put it in words. And if those thoughts start up about, "well maybe this I do is just not very good" well okay, where can I stand most improvement? Or is there something in the voice that probably isn't going to change much?

Point being: if I start posting stuff here again, it's probably gonna be the same script that plays. Only remedy is to cultivate that above-mentioned mindset. It isn't that big a deal. They're just stories. Just trying to have fun. Excellent reason to think about kinky fantasies. Chill out about it all.

That's the first thing.

 

[gunhilltrain]

For my purposes here, I'll just say this is what I needed to hear. It would align with what a few others have said about coming and going, tossing this down here or something else somewhere else. A kind of casual, slack, distance attitude/mindset. That's the main thing I need to do I guess.

Hey I'll admit it: when I wrote and published here over the course of several years and my scores remained in the lower 4s... sometimes it didn't bother me. But sometimes it did. Because this is something I am very interested in and greatly enjoy thinking up stuff and trying to put it in words. And if those thoughts start up about, "well maybe this I do is just not very good" well okay, where can I stand most improvement? Or is there something in the voice that probably isn't going to change much?

Point being: if I start posting stuff here again, it's probably gonna be the same script that plays. Only remedy is to cultivate that above-mentioned mindset. It isn't that big a deal. They're just stories. Just trying to have fun. Excellent reason to think about kinky fantasies. Chill out about it all.

That's the first thing.

The lower fours? That's pretty good, and not just because I have so many of them. When I first got here, I probably underestimated how difficult getting a high score is. I know some people get a lot over 4.5, and I don't know how they do it. Are the stories really better, or are they catering to a certain audience, or does the reason vary from author to author - or maybe, for our purposes, it doesn't matter. So much depends on who feels like voting that week, or when the site does a sweep, and other factors. So when I got a 3.95 on the last Pink Orchid event, I thought it could have done better but I still count it as a modest success, not a failure.

This is so subjective that it's hard to explain, but you have to aim for something that's not too casual and slack - because you have to have a focus. And yeah, since you're not getting paid for it, you might as well try to enjoy the process. I detect a certain dissatisfaction around here because the scoring seems so arbitrary. Sure, it's not truly fair, but what in life is?

 

[RoperTrace]

The lower fours? That's pretty good, and not just because I have so many of them. When I first got here, I probably underestimated how difficult getting a high score is. I know some people get a lot over 4.5, and I don't know how they do it. Are the stories really better, or are they catering to a certain audience, or does the reason vary from author to author - or maybe, for our purposes, it doesn't matter. So much depends on who feels like voting that week, or when the site does a sweep, and other factors. So when I got a 3.95 on the last Pink Orchid event, I thought it could have done better but I still count it as a modest success, not a failure.

This is so subjective that it's hard to explain, but you have to aim for something that's not too casual and slack - because you have to have a focus. And yeah, since you're not getting paid for it, you might as well try to enjoy the process. I detect a certain dissatisfaction around here because the scoring seems so arbitrary. Sure, it's not truly fair, but what in life is?

I've posted some stories on another site, and the scores were quite different from Lit.com. The more wham-bam stories over there scored fairly high. And some of my better written, although slower stories were slammed on that site. Very little correlation. I no longer post over there. I like that Laurel has some relatively strict rules, even though a few got me at times, but only a small percentages overall.

 

[t_h_seacrest]

To offer a general purpose reply:
On the other hand... In all fairness, I gotta say
just since generating a few of these toe-dipping threads, getting a little back-and-forth,
when I go to a mess around with a document I'm sensing the return of the fun, playful, kinda surreal, slightly twisty style of thinking/writing. That had felt distant for the last couple years. Sometimes a guy just needs to get used to a little grit in his coffee.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've posted some stories on another site, and the scores were quite different from Lit.com. The more wham-bam stories over there scored fairly high. And some of my better written, although slower stories were slammed on that site. Very little correlation. I no longer post over there. I like that Laurel has some relatively strict rules, even though a few got me at times, but only a small percentages overall.

I'm not sure which site you mean, but there is one that forbids, I think, non-members from voting or commenting, which reduces the craziness somewhat. The readers tend to be pretty laid back, although there are a lot fewer of them. (The site is much smaller.)

There is no Laurel, but there is a rotating cast of volunteer moderators. I've mentioned that they will occasionally come up with some very strange or arbitrary reason for rejecting a story based on their own opinions.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I feel seen, MB. Thank you. Also, congrats on the followers and accolades.

These are old-ish forums. Old-ish forums survive on the backs of veteran posters. Even if the early pioneers of these forums were open-minded, these folks tend naturally to be dreamers and wanderers and to excuse themselves before too long, and to leave behind them the old dogs who are either too weary for new tricks or were never much into "tricks" to begin with.

This social dynamic self-selects for traditionalism and hierarchical logic: newbies may get with the program or see themselves out. Loyalist newbies and apprentices become servants of the veteran cause. Whatever arbitrary variables describe the culture of the veteran cohort become faithfully upheld community-wide values. Prejudice takes root. Well-meaning community members know to apologize for it, but t urge good-natured complacency. Less patient community members proudly and at times viciously uphold it.

The arbitrary values that rose to prejudice on the Lit forums are summarized, I think, succinctly by how you’ve labeled them: The Almighty Stroker. What happened to succeed became, at some point before you or I got here, what deserved to succeed. And stories or authors that deviate from pursuing the perfection of the Almighty Stroker are at best only politely tolerated. At worst, these dorks get picked on.

Yeah, okay, I’m venting. Sorry. Once you get a little social/org psych under your belt, you start to see (and resent) these dynamics everywhere you see them. The inevitability of prejudice. The tragedy of the commons. The Literotica forums.

Meanwhile, I admire that you found the middle path, MB. It’s heartening. You seem to speak of a place where dorks are safe and not unappreciated.

All right, I guess that's what you have experienced here. In the four years I've been here, I haven't noticed the forums being rigidly hierarchical; it seems more random and disorganized, if anything. At least, I haven't felt there was something I couldn't say based on the factors you mentioned. Yeah, opinions here will vary on different issues.

I've been in a handful of contests and events, and I never felt I had to meet or not meet some level of explicitness. I don't know if this is important or not, but the last Geek Pride contest I was in had a rather mild plot in the story - it definitely wasn't a stroker story - and it seemed to be received pretty well.

 

[RoperTrace]

I'm not sure which site you mean, but there is one that forbids, I think, non-members from voting or commenting, which reduces the craziness somewhat. The readers tend to be pretty laid back, although there are a lot fewer of them. (The site is much smaller.)

There is no Laurel, but there is a rotating cast of volunteer moderators. I've mentioned that they will occasionally come up with some very strange or arbitrary reason for rejecting a story based on their own opinions.

S.O.L.

 

[burgwad]

All right, I guess that's what you have experienced here. In the four years I've been here, I haven't noticed the forums being rigidly hierarchical; it seems more random and disorganized, if anything. At least, I haven't felt there was something I couldn't say based on the factors you mentioned. Yeah, opinions here will vary on different issues.

I've been in a handful of contests and events, and I never felt I had to meet or not meet some level of explicitness. I don't know if this is important or not, but the last Geek Pride contest I was in had a rather mild plot in the story - it definitely wasn't a stroker story - and it seemed to be received pretty well.

Yep, what you say rings true, too, especially from a big-picture perspective, even if I'd maintain that what I've said (and what MB said) holds water.

Perceptions of Lit's forums do almost certainly vary depending on what you're writing, for whom, and how much you're engaging in the meantime. You're an older hand than me, you publish mostly short-form stuff, and you deal chiefly in BDSM and Erotic Couplings. I'm still a "Newbie" forum user, I publish chiefly long-form stuff, and I'm dealing in Incest/Erotica. We're going to fit in differently, chafe differently, and this is before taking into account just how differently we might see the people we are fitting in with/chafing.

Let me gently reiterate that I am professionally educated in, sensitive to, and intolerant of organizational dysfunction. I don't necessarily mean to flex. It's just where my head is at, a lot of the time. I'm trained to catch small whiffs of dysfunction that others might miss, and to sniff out patterns of mistreatment long-timers might have learned to take for granted.

But like I said, I also get where you're at, too. I'm not here to cause additional dysfunction, lol (though I'm no stranger to being accused of that). Suffice to say, maybe you and I differ in what we call bullying, or in how much would be necessary to describe a pattern amidst so much disorganized forum chatter, or heck, in whether this subject matter is even worth caring about. Like, at the end of the day, who loses sleep over how random strangers on the Lit forums are treating each other?

I appreciate your laidback pushback. I get it. I understand this place a little better because of it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Yep, what you say rings true, too, especially from a big-picture perspective, even if I'd maintain that what I've said (and what MB said) holds water.

Perceptions of Lit's forums do almost certainly vary depending on what you're writing, for whom, and how much you're engaging in the meantime. You're an older hand than me, you publish mostly short-form stuff, and you deal chiefly in BDSM and Erotic Couplings. I'm still a "Newbie" forum user, I publish chiefly long-form stuff, and I'm dealing in Incest/Erotica. We're going to fit in differently, chafe differently, and this is before taking into account just how differently we might see the people we are fitting in with/chafing.

Let me gently reiterate that I am professionally educated in, sensitive to, and intolerant of organizational dysfunction. I don't necessarily mean to flex. It's just where my head is at, a lot of the time. I'm trained to catch small whiffs of dysfunction that others might miss, and to sniff out patterns of mistreatment long-timers might have learned to take for granted.

But like I said, I also get where you're at, too. I'm not here to cause additional dysfunction, lol (though I'm no stranger to being accused of that). Suffice to say, maybe you and I differ in what we call bullying, or in how much would be necessary to describe a pattern amidst so much disorganized forum chatter, or heck, in whether this subject matter is even worth caring about. Like, at the end of the day, who loses sleep over how random strangers on the Lit forums are treating each other?

I appreciate your laidback pushback. I get it. I understand this place a little better because of it.

I just want to mention that I joined a couple of other sites after Lit. Some of the stuff on those is completely "original," but some of it is new versions of stuff from here and a few are near dupes. I've also gone the other way and put some new versions of stuff from those onto here.

I guess this is sort of important to me because I am retired and it helped to find something new to do with my time. But yeah, it's nowhere near as intense as having an actual office job, and I've had some of those. When a salary is on the line, and people have to share the same space every day, dysfunction becomes a big deal really quickly. I was lucky in that I only had a handful of of co-workers, like maybe three or four, that were a problem. The management of those places, however, wasn't always so great.

You'll also notice that I have some essays on here about driving a New York taxi forty-four years ago, and if you want to see a high-stress, mentally and physically difficult (maybe call it degrading) environment, that was it. Whatever happens of Lit or these other sites is trivial compared to that. (I will add new essays on that eventually.) I don't actually have to truly interact with other Lit members in "real life." I hardly know who they really are.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Let me gently reiterate that I am professionally educated in, sensitive to, and intolerant of organizational dysfunction. I don't necessarily mean to flex. It's just where my head is at, a lot of the time. I'm trained to catch small whiffs of dysfunction that others might miss, and to sniff out patterns of mistreatment long-timers might have learned to take for granted.

That sounds to me a bit like "new car syndrome" - when you've just bought one you see every other bugger who's just bought the same model. But it doesn't mean everyone is behaving the way you think they are. It just means they're driving different cars. Or in Gunhill's case, catching the train .

 

[gunhilltrain]

That sounds to me a bit like "new car syndrome" - when you've just bought one you see every other bugger who's just bought the same model. But it doesn't mean everyone is behaving the way you think they are. It just means they're driving different cars. Or in Gunhill's case, catching the train .

Oh, I've owned a lot of cars, both new and used. My favorite perhaps was 1979 Ford Fairmont that I bought for $200 and then later sold for $200.

I've caught some trains too:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rw19qK83...fPCwCLcBGAs/s1600/Hells_on_wheels+%288%29.jpg

But that was the bad old days. As I've said, now it looks like Zurich down there.

 

[RoperTrace]

I just want to mention that I joined a couple of other sites after Lit. Some of the stuff on those is completely "original," but some of it is new versions of stuff from here and a few are near dupes. I've also gone the other way and put some new versions of stuff from those onto here.

I guess this is sort of important to me because I am retired and it helped to find something new to do with my time. But yeah, it's nowhere near as intense as having an actual office job, and I've had some of those. When a salary is on the line, and people have to share the same space every day, dysfunction becomes a big deal really quickly. I was lucky in that I only had a handful of of co-workers, like maybe three or four, that were a problem. The management of those places, however, wasn't always so great.

You'll also notice that I have some essays on here about driving a New York taxi forty-four years ago, and if you want to see a high-stress, mentally and physically difficult (maybe call it degrading) environment, that was it. Whatever happens of Lit or these other sites is trivial compared to that. (I will add new essays on that eventually.) I don't actually have to truly interact with other Lit members in "real life." I hardly know who they really are.

Essays on driving a NY taxi forty-four years ago? Now as crazy as that sounds, I'm highly interested in reading those. I had a co-worker who worked in NYC as bell-hop in some swanky hotel when he was going to college. He had some good stories and met a few celebs, some very nice and some quite bitchy. Unfortunately, he never wrote about that experience. I do remember that he said one of the nicest was Shelley Winters, and Cybill Shepherd was the other side of the coin.

 

[FifthEstate]

On the one hand, I am very grateful to Lit.com for making me a better writer. I started writing erotica to brush up on what I wasn't doing in my nonfiction work; dialogue, plotting, and storytelling. I still post here on occasion. Some of my early stuff is really cringe-worthy. I have a relatively large group of followers and they are nice but my main motivation is to write stories that entertain me as a writer and creator. Nearly all of my erotica is shrink fiction published under an alias on Amazon. I'm not making huge amounts of money, but I can usually cover one or two bills every month. This, of course, is more than any of us make for posting on an amateur site. I will probably never completely abandon Lit.com. It is a great place to park a story and get lots of views. But, because the stories here do nothing for my bottom line, I only place oddments and subject matter I can't tackle under my alias. My alias has a nice-sized audience that buys every new book I post on Amazon. Feedback is always a kick, especially when I realize that I have touched some of my readers on a very deep spiritual level. That side of Lit.com is irreplaceable. It is just one f my many homes on the internet, like any home, some days you can't stand it or the people in it, other days it is paradise.

I’ve read a lot of your work; you were pretty influential in developing my interest in the non-consent genre, but I’ve always wondered about the misspelling of Thief in your penname. Was it purposeful? If so, why?

 

[Magineer]

I’ve read a lot of your work; you were pretty influential in developing my interest in the non-consent genre, but I’ve always wondered about the misspelling of Thief in your penname. Was it purposeful? If so, why?

Yes, I too am not too enamoured of misspellings... but on the other hand we can all quibble. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that 'purposeful' means 'intentional'... whereas it actually means 'with resolve or determination'. Perhaps wifethief will pick you up on that.