Curate, connect, and discover
I remember venting about being upset that the fanfic series I put a lot of time and effort into wasn’t doing well on my anime account. It was pretty popular in the fandom, and everyone requested that I bring it back and continue it, so I did.
After posting it, something people had been pestering me and begging me for, it preformed terribly, which really killed my motivation. I posted a short vent, upset that it didn’t do well like my other posts did.
Do you know what the response to my vent was? People sent me asks saying I was being dramatic and ungrateful, that if I just kept posting the series and didn’t stop that it would still be popular.
I had taken a break from that series for mental health reasons(I was receiving death threats and being harassed) when before I had been pumping out chapters nearly weekly. Still, all that content, over 100k+ words of material wasn’t enough to keep them interested. They always wanted more, the threat of people leaving or unfollowing me if I didn’t post faster looming over my head like a dark cloud.
Writing became a chore. I didn’t view my readers as friends and comrades in my fandom, I viewed them as people that would leave the second I didn’t live up to their strict expectations.
This is all to say that I want you, the readers, to think about the author behind the works you read and love. Think about WHY you think it’s feasible for a person to be uploading every single week without a break. Why do you lose interest if an author isn’t working themselves to the bone to pump out chapters that could have been so much better if given the time to really flesh them out?
Be kinder to writers, be patient. We aren’t machines, and it takes time for us to make the content you want to see. Don’t rush us, and be grateful for all the free content you get to see with just a click or tap.
Don’t be the reason an author decides to give up writing.