Shouting into the void
So I posted a fic last Sunday to absolute cricket chirps. It’s an MCU crossover with a mostly dead fandom, so I wasn’t expecting much, and that was precisely what I received: a handful of kudos and nothing else.
And all I can think of is back in 1998, when I posted my very first fic ever for that same dead fandom (less dead at the time, obvs.) and people actually talked to me about it.
I was fourteen then. Now I’m thirty-two.
Part of this is cultural shifting. Fandoms were much smaller spaces, back then, and all the work was concentrated on forums and fannish websites. The only way to make friends was to talk to people.
Like, I realize that I’m a cranky fandom grandparent at this point, but good goddamn people, if you like a fic, have the decency to at least leave kudos for it.
Part of the reason this bugs me is that most people writing in fandom don’t have my absurd self-confidence and literal years of experience as a writer. Many of them are ickle babby writers, even if they’re adults.
Writers need feedback. We thrive on it. Going to Marrakesh (which is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish for me to rant about) was finished because of it.
Here’s a fun fact about me: I’m a compositionist by trade. My job is teaching college students how to write. My students are of all ages, genders, races, dis/ability, you name it. One of the things I emphasize in my classes is the importance of feedback at all steps of the writing process.
Brainstorming? They freewrite and I offer casual verbal feedback: yes, that’s a good idea; no, that’s too broad; both of those would work so it might be time for a coin flip; no, don’t say what you think would be easy, tell me what you really want to do.
Researching? Constantly discussed. How are we doing, what are we stuck on, what sources are you struggling with, where did you find it and what’s the ethos?
Outlining? Done in-class, with models they can use or not-use at their leisure.
Drafting? Constantly discussed. How are we doing, what are we stuck on, what do we need, are there any questions?
Peer review? In-depth but casual. They very quickly learn to ask me and each other incisive questions: what did you mean here? what are the author’s qualifications to talk about this? who’s your audience? is there biased language in this piece? does anyone know how to properly cite [insert weird thing here]?
Revision? They freewrite about it, and give me such gems as “I need to stop letting myself procrastinate,” “I am feeling better about my commas!”, “I had to redo the whole thing b/c I realized a source was crap,” and my personal new favorite from yesterday, “I am going to look over this again because I DO NOT TRUST THE COMMA MAN!”
(peer review sessions can get derpy in my classrooms)
When I grade their papers, I leave in-line comments, fill out a rubric, and leave them an overall holistic comment.
Once things are graded, we spend time in-class discussing problem areas. They read over my comments and keep track of specific issues on an error log. They have small group discussions about the problem areas they have. They’re able to track themselves getting more comfortable with their writing.
Constant discussion of ideas, constant discussion of their writing, constant feedback: how you turn a class full of students who dread writing papers into an active community of writers.
The thing is, though, when you never hear anything back? You might as well not have written anything at all.
Many of the writers you see in fandom don’t have beta readers–and why would they? My betas are friends I made back in the day when the way you made new friends in the fandom was by screaming into their inbox that you liked their fics.
Maybe this is a tumblr thing–we lost fantastic communities in the move from LJ, and quite frankly it’s hard to keep up with things on here. But people on tumblr will scream about your fics–just never to your face.
I know because I’ve seen it with my own work–people happily sharing and talking about whatever it is that they read, and never once reaching out to me, the actual author, who is right here and completely talk-to-able. Hell, I’ve reached out to people that I know have read and loved my writing and never heard anything back from them at all.
Guys. That is not how you build a community of writers. It does not work. If you want more fanfics, you have to support your writers.
I am not saying I’m looking for validation–I know I’m good at what I do, full stop, and my IRL is busy enough that at this point in my life I feel like a dabbler, if even that. People still read my old stuff. I haven’t taken down a lot of my old and badly-written stuff because I know it still makes people happy, even though they never say a word.
But if we as fic-readers want to have fics to read, we have to at least leave kudos, b/c visitor counts don’t mean shit. Someone could open a fic and immediately click out of it and so you have no way to know if they even read it at all.
And yes, I leave kudos every time. There’s also a fic recs section on my personal website for my absolute favorites.
Is it shyness? The person on the end of the other fanfic is just that, a person, and unlike a celebrity, they are a person that you can talk to.
My students are shy at first, but then they get used to talking about their ideas, talking about their writing, talking about what they struggle with and are trying to get better at and the progress they’ve seen themselves making. By the time they leave my class, they’ve developed a stronger sense of who they are as writers.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if fanfic writers felt that same way?