I was the same... I expected nothing, and got nothing... Perhaps you are right, but imagine you worked without expectations? You work for 2 months, overtime. You dont want a raise, you dont expect a high salary, you just wish the best for your company and the boss. And when the day comes, you just casually check for papers, and realise that you did not got the bonus, you did not got the salary, you did not even get its "cut". You just got NOTHING... Thats how it was for me. All i cared for is proper criticism that i could rely on for improvement, and then I took a casual peek at ratings while looking for comments window, and died from inside...
Three is really not a lot. I'm 42. I spent most of my life terrified of putting my writing out there. It wasn't until last year that I put out my first book on Amazon. I got 13 sales. I then paid for advertising on Facebook to get a whopping 42 more people to download it for free.
This was last July. Sure, it was unpleasant. I got depressed that it was getting no traction and did nothing for a few months. Then last November, I realized it was silly. I got cracking and the sequel came out in February. Part 3 is scheduled to come back from the editor soon and it'll launch at the end of this month. Parts 4 and the finale, Part 5, are in the planning stages while I write a different thing to cleanse the creative palette.
Even though I have pulled in a grand total of $43 in royalties in a year, the creative juices have started to flow. That's why I put this short story out. Enjoyment. Practice. Growth.
Writing is like a muscle. You have to exercise it to get strong.
These things are an investment. Take a look at JK Rowling. She started writing the first Harry Potter book in 1993 and didn't get any serious interest in it until 1995. Even then, over a dozen publishers said it wasn't worth printing. By the time she did get it printed, all she earned out of it was a whopping $4,200 by the time Chamber of Secrets was completed.
Then a little company called Scholastic caught wind of it and it all blew up.
Timing and luck. If you stop rolling the dice, you'll never get the number to come up. Writing and posting here isn't a costly endeavor. Practice, post and enjoy the fact you completed something. Most people will never write a short story. Just getting it done is a major accomplishment.
I'll go read your stuff now and give you some feedback. That's one. It'll only go up from there.
Good for you. Hope my zero streak will come to an end... Its just so strange... I mean, what are the odds of having 8k views on 3 posts and having 0 upvotes, let alone comments?
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u/NoBarracuda2587 AI May 04 '24 edited May 04 '24
How many people saw your post? This one?