Reply To: Ratings/Likes

[Ginger Herten]

We’re human. I am very firm in knowing logically that I write these stories for myself and what other think of them has no real effect on my life. That logic in no way changes my need to share them and the feelings I have about how well received they are.

I accept though that none of my stories are ever going to be smash hits. For one thing the smooth shave is very popular here, but it just bores me. Technically I had a smooth shave in one of my recent stories, simply because it really fit the plot, but I don’t really go into it. I know if I had taken the time to flesh out that part of the story and make it more detailed, have the main character observing the razor scraping through the foam, etc, it would have made the story more popular, but I might never have finished it out of boredom. So instead I simply mention that it will happen/did happen, then move on to detailing how the main characters hair is cut. In the end her hair is extremely short, to the point she calls herself bald, but of course she’s not bald. (I am deliberately not going to go into a rant about my annoyance at people who buzz their hair down to a number 6 and call it shaving their head, or the one that annoys me even more about them frying their hair with bleach till it starts breaking and calling it their hair falling out.)

My stories tend to fall into 3 categories, though not always neatly because life isn’t neat that way, I assume I am probably the only person who notices these categories: 1. ideas I just have to get out of my head; 2. I’m going to pour these feelings I’m having about a woman into a fictional story; 3. I’m in a mood, and I am just going to write out in gory detail a fantasy I am having. It will probably surprise no one that the first category that are more about ideas than feelings tend to only mildly popular at best, rarely being either very popular or practically rejected. I still like to share them though, I accept and understand why they aren’t going to be super popular. Heck, they aren’t usually personal favorites for me either.

The other two categories though get complicated. The second category, the ones where I just pour out a bunch of feelings, tend to garner a lot of likes when those feelings are positive ones, and tend to get a bit of a cold shoulder when those feelings are negative ones. They are more likely to get commented on, they are just well received. However, people read them, like them, then tend to just forget them. It was the feel good of the moment.

Then there is the third category, where I’m in a mood. They don’t tend to garner likes and comments. What they do get is read over and over. They get read repeatedly gathering views for years. So in some ways, they are more popular than the ones that grab all the likes, they just appeal to a different crowd than the small number of people who think to hit the thumbs up or risk commenting.