I love this forum, but (my journey)

[EddieDavidson]

Let me caveat this with the realization that the problem is the author not the forum. That is why I say "I love this forum" - but, the problem is me.

I still want to share my journey, for your edification.


When I first started on this forum, people were so positive and helpful. I immediately had someone offer to help me edit and unfortunately I don't use external email to communicate with anyone so that didn't work out but it was great. It was a breath of fresh air for me and hyperfocused only on stories I enjoy.

I have spent the last 10 years or so on a single site called stories online. I felt like I never needed another site because stories online used to be filled with these great authors like Vulgus, Phil Phantom, Amanda Serve, MaryS

It's not just the rise of AI slop. I don't know how to understand people who want to press some magic button and get a story they didn't write and then claim it was theirs. There's so many good stories on the internet that they could just steal if all they wanted was credit for something they didn't do..

It's that the replacement writers that have taken their place are writing stories I don't even understand anymore. I've always been a niche writer but now I wade through about 98% of either boring tearjerker porn that's sort of like a melodramatic soap opera or it's a city of dragons or something that I don't understand about a surfing goat god written by memeboys or something.


This forum is hyper focused on stuff I love. I could also post immediately and edit my stuff so it felt like a great place to try out new ideas

I even spoke highly of how positive everything was here on stories online.


Then one fine day two trolls decided to make my life miserable. I was deep into this really good story and I had a couple of others in process and they chose to respond to every thread and say some things that really hurt it killed my interest in ever returning to those stories after having put so much work into 28 chapters of what may have been arguably one of my most popular stories about an older sister that wants to convince the family to be a nudist household. I do not think I can ever get that vibe back.

To their credit, the admins we're able to take care of it and one of the people was banned but I'm sure he came back. The other hasn't troubled me since then..

That is when the feedback stopped for me. People advised me that I should have just been quiet and allowed them to do whatever they wanted and grow a "thick skin". I didn't agree with that but I guess that was true. I was supposed to be passive and just allow people to shit on my work and me personally.

The upside of having a forum to get immediate constructive feedback is the downside that it's perfect for trolls to drop a motivation bomb on you about touching grass when you can't.

I've continued anyway and every now and then someone will drop a note like

"That's good. You should probably keep going"

No one is really a fan of mine and no one is really passionate about my stories. It's hard for me to get passionate about them. I tried every possible approach including writing in third person narrative that is more popular here.

I was told by someone else that my stories just weren't long enough to deserve any feedback.. I have about 79 stories on stories online and the average length is 250,000 words some of which are over 800,000 words which is longer than War and Peace. The reason I have to stop every chapter where I do here is because it hits the maximum length of the capability of the message board.

It isn't length. I'm not jealous and I'm happy that it happened but whenever I see new authors post even a few paragraphs of what seems like obvious AI content, they get some constructive encouraging responses. I saw someone recently post a question and they got three or four responses. That's great but it proves that for one reason or another I have become a bit of a hermit here.

"Poor old Eddie, writing his stories for nobody."

I thrive like a plant with water on constructive feedback and encouragement. I don't have to get gold stars and be told I'm a good boy but if I knew my stuff actually pleased anybody I would probably write more.

I almost never get feedback on stories online either so I've got a bunch of stories that are just sitting there without any end because I can't get the motivation to end them.

I do not even get clicks of "thanks" which is sort of sending it's own kind of message.

I'm going to rewrite my latest story and I might go ahead and finish it here. I usually write about three chapters and then lose steam if nobody gives a shit about it and try something else.

I had 800 reads of my last story, which was 800 chances for someone to do just that. Nobody did even when I asked.

The only feedback I got was that my story wasn't really long enough to warrant a response and they presume it's better than AI slop. Think about that. 800 people - one response and it was just a guess on why nobody could give two shits about it.

Meanwhile, other authors have received feedback, so maybe I should amend it to say - water all the plants, not just the flowers.

The others may bloom one day. The em-dash AI sloppers are weeds and you can pull those but they'll just come right back.

I will definitely stay here and continue to read but I've taken a hint on posting content hardly anyone is going to enjoy enough to comment on it. As I say at the top, the problem isn't the forum, it's the author.

That being said, I would strongly encourage everybody to take a minute when you read a story to click the thank button if you enjoyed it. That alone is a bit of a reward.

Take a minute to respond with some constructive criticism or positive feedback. Sometimes consider sending a private email to an author with some spelling corrections or advice about show versus tell.

That's how you pay your membership dues here. It just like growing plants. We'll grow for free but if you leave us without water and sunshine, we wither.

Be nice to each other.


Hooked6 did me a huge favor long time ago by giving me some advice that I've always tried to follow. That investment pays dividends in new content when that author gets better and continues to create.

My advice to you is to be like him, and nurture and advise and protect the authors here. Encourage people to give it a try. All it takes to be an author is to just sit down and tell the story like you would if you were sitting across from somebody in a bar..

Anyone can do it, but it takes actually doing it to master.. very few people start out great at it

I know at some point I created good content because I have over a thousand followers on stories online and that means 1,000 people took the time to say yeah I want updates on this. I have stories with over 250,000 views . The voting system is broken over there, because it represents a statistically small population of people who typically vote in the outliers but the number of reads does not lie

These are free stories, you don't have to pay a dime to be here but you should make it your payment of being nice and positive and encouraging authors.

That's what I will continue to do here.

In the meantime, I've been slowly moving my older stories to this site (link at bottom).

It's full of creativity and it's supposed to be about fanfiction but I found "no fandom" has all kinds of great stuff. I'll see if this new site, is the motivation I need to actually continue my stories or if I've just become a shitty writer..



https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddie ... ieDavidson

[NudeBaG]

Keep writing FOR YOU.
If you’ve got stories ready to go, post them.
They’re too long?
Break them into parts.
(Just PLEASE post them in the same thread. One of my biggest gripes is stories posted in individual posts. It makes them nearly impossible to keep track of.)

As far as positive/negative/no feedback:
Be patient.
Be proactive.
Be constructive (of yourself).

Eventually, you’ll write something that resonates with SOMEONE.
Even if they don’t comment.
The amount of passive ‘readers’ on this site would surprise you.

Just post it.
Get it out.
Not every story on here is an award winner (and I’m sure a lot of us wouldn’t want a reward for the stuff we post here lol)
There are stories that are incomplete on here that authors either lost interest in or forgot about (I know I have a few) but the comments keep them alive.

As far as ‘mean/unnecessarily critical’ comments, if it gets out of hand, the admins DO step in and clean shit up, which I appreciate.

Again, while I haven’t read your stories (yet) keep writing.
Even if it feels like you’re typing into the void.