NoTalentHack
Corrupting Influence
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2022
- Posts
- 2,455
This is pure self-aggrandizement. Feel free to skip it, but so many of y'all have been integral to my enjoyment of writing for Literotica that this seemed like the best place to post it.
It's been one year since my first story got published on the site, and it's been a helluva year.
I originally got into doing this after I got tired of working on a visual novel, because I liked the writing, tolerated the programming, and loathed the art portion. I may return to that now that I have some of the art issues sorted, but I don't know. Regardless, that first story, I Know My Wife, and its reception was exactly the punch in the arm I needed. The response to After the Future is Gone, my second, absolutely blew me away and got me completely addicted to the dopamine flood of writing and publishing. Especially in Loving Wives, where the feedback comes blisteringly fast and ruthlessly honest. And while I'm not quite the publishing fiend I was in those first few months, this feels like it's going to be, at the very least, a hobby that's going to stick.
That's important to me, because ADHD--or at least the form I have--lends itself to picking up new interests, throwing myself wholeheartedly into them, reaching a journeyman level of skill quickly, then abandoning them completely when the dopamine flood slows to a trickle. Almost every person with the type of ADHD I have has a laundry list of hobbies, often quite expensive ones, that we not only sucked the marrow from but ate the bones, too. So there's been this longtime fear I have that writing is going to be like one of those kinds.
So far, though, it's not. Instead, it's more like videogaming. I rarely get tired of videogaming, I just get tired of individual videogames or genres. I threw myself into boomer shooters for a year, then stopped almost entirely. I've been playing nothing but fishing games for a couple months (Dave the Diver is great!), but their hold is slackening. The next thing could be 4X games or bullet hell games or sims or or or. Just like writing, it turns out. Tired of LW? Knock out a stroker, a sci-fi story, or a romance!
So, yes, you're stuck with me.
While I was in the throes of my New Hobby Energy period, I set myself some profoundly dumb goals, then stupidly added to them during the year.
But I still did it. I hit my goals.
Mostly, anyways. I missed two events that were added to the calendar after the year started and one that ended less than a week after I set my goal. I only hit 1990 followers as of today. But other than that? I hit all of them: 52 in 52, 16 categories, red Hs in 12 categories, published two stories for pay (I can buy a Starbucks with the proceeds!), and several collaborations.
I couldn't have done any of it, though, without the friends I've made here. They encouraged me, helped me, collaborated with me, and commiserated with me. They told me it was okay to miss the goals when IRL got rough, but they didn't discourage me from trying. @seraph_nocturne wrote a wonderful set of shared stories with me. @elizaloo narrated one of my stories. @MediocreAuthor caught my mistakes. @Djmac1031, @EmilyMiller, @oneagainst, @ThatNewGuy--along with many, many more that I hope I don't offend by omitting their names--beta read for me and chatted with me about writing and publishing and all sorts of other topics. Thank you to all of them, especially.
As to the next year? Hell, I don't know. I've taken a couple weeks off, and now I'm writing again. I'm looking at Medium, Amazon, going back to my visual novel (thank you, Stable Diffusion, for making the art process suck less), doing some editing... I have no idea. But I know, mixed in there, I'll still be writing and posting stories here. See y'all in the New section.
It's been one year since my first story got published on the site, and it's been a helluva year.
I originally got into doing this after I got tired of working on a visual novel, because I liked the writing, tolerated the programming, and loathed the art portion. I may return to that now that I have some of the art issues sorted, but I don't know. Regardless, that first story, I Know My Wife, and its reception was exactly the punch in the arm I needed. The response to After the Future is Gone, my second, absolutely blew me away and got me completely addicted to the dopamine flood of writing and publishing. Especially in Loving Wives, where the feedback comes blisteringly fast and ruthlessly honest. And while I'm not quite the publishing fiend I was in those first few months, this feels like it's going to be, at the very least, a hobby that's going to stick.
That's important to me, because ADHD--or at least the form I have--lends itself to picking up new interests, throwing myself wholeheartedly into them, reaching a journeyman level of skill quickly, then abandoning them completely when the dopamine flood slows to a trickle. Almost every person with the type of ADHD I have has a laundry list of hobbies, often quite expensive ones, that we not only sucked the marrow from but ate the bones, too. So there's been this longtime fear I have that writing is going to be like one of those kinds.
So far, though, it's not. Instead, it's more like videogaming. I rarely get tired of videogaming, I just get tired of individual videogames or genres. I threw myself into boomer shooters for a year, then stopped almost entirely. I've been playing nothing but fishing games for a couple months (Dave the Diver is great!), but their hold is slackening. The next thing could be 4X games or bullet hell games or sims or or or. Just like writing, it turns out. Tired of LW? Knock out a stroker, a sci-fi story, or a romance!
So, yes, you're stuck with me.
While I was in the throes of my New Hobby Energy period, I set myself some profoundly dumb goals, then stupidly added to them during the year.
- Enter every contest and event
- Get a story up in at least twelve categories (and, preferably, a red H in at least 12 categories)
- Create 52 works in 52 weeks
- Get 2000 followers
- Publish something for pay
- Collaborate with others
But I still did it. I hit my goals.
Mostly, anyways. I missed two events that were added to the calendar after the year started and one that ended less than a week after I set my goal. I only hit 1990 followers as of today. But other than that? I hit all of them: 52 in 52, 16 categories, red Hs in 12 categories, published two stories for pay (I can buy a Starbucks with the proceeds!), and several collaborations.
I couldn't have done any of it, though, without the friends I've made here. They encouraged me, helped me, collaborated with me, and commiserated with me. They told me it was okay to miss the goals when IRL got rough, but they didn't discourage me from trying. @seraph_nocturne wrote a wonderful set of shared stories with me. @elizaloo narrated one of my stories. @MediocreAuthor caught my mistakes. @Djmac1031, @EmilyMiller, @oneagainst, @ThatNewGuy--along with many, many more that I hope I don't offend by omitting their names--beta read for me and chatted with me about writing and publishing and all sorts of other topics. Thank you to all of them, especially.
As to the next year? Hell, I don't know. I've taken a couple weeks off, and now I'm writing again. I'm looking at Medium, Amazon, going back to my visual novel (thank you, Stable Diffusion, for making the art process suck less), doing some editing... I have no idea. But I know, mixed in there, I'll still be writing and posting stories here. See y'all in the New section.
.
.
But until then, I think it's safe to say you're more than ready to move toward diving into the main stream.
