Okay, so I have mentioned several times that I’m going through a funk. It’s been an excruciating sort of writer’s block. The kind where you have ideas and you try to write them down and get into them, but… you just can’t. Writing becomes this painful process and you hate everything that you come out with. And it goes on for months.
Months of getting a paragraph or a few sentences down before you’re tempted to throw it all out. And then you do that once you manage to get four chapters down because it’s absolute shit.
But at the back of your mind, there’s this whispering, telling you that you need to start posting again. You have to push through and get something down. If you take too long, you lose followers. If you lose followers, you lose what little traction you may have gained.
God. Since when have I centered my writing around followers? It’s both the curse and the blessing of this age of writing.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Wattpad. I love discovering writers and stories there. Following them. Interacting with them (that’s actually the best part). I love posting my work there and seeing that people enjoy it. I love the opportunities it gives.
But right now I really hate the pressure I’ve somehow put on myself to be successful on Wattpad by posting constantly. I’m a nobody on Wattpad. I mean, yes, I made the short list for the Wattys last year. But honestly, it doesn’t mean much. I didn’t gain any followers from it. A bunch of people put my book on reading lists, but it didn’t necessarily translate into reads or comments.
I thought it was a good step in building a following for my books that I self-publish. It wasn’t. I mean, it didn’t hurt, but it didn’t change much. I’ve been watching and following a lot of writers that have been successful and trying to follow similar paths and I’ve gotten so caught up in all the logistics that I forgot about the fact that I started writing because, well, I love it.
I seriously don’t know how they do it. Constantly posting. And it’s not bad. Yes, there are typos, but the work is still good. And they’re getting thousands of reads per chapter. And hundreds of comments and likes. Lately, I’ve been pushing myself to get more writing done so I can post more and… it’s all shit.
It’s so close to burning out that it scares me.
Which is why I think I need to just stop. And remember that everyone has their own process. What works for others, might not work for me. And that’s okay.
Of course, I’m going to keep reading and commenting all, but I really need to give myself room to breathe and reassess. Stop putting so much focus on quantity and get back to giving myself time to enjoy writing. And all the research that goes into a book.
And let go of that drive to write more, post more, publish more. Then refocus it into making what I do write better.
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