From the moment you hit that sign up button, you have a grand total of zero followers and absolutely no audience. Seeing that incredibly large daunting number on your followers tab often feels like a mix of two things:
One, the refreshing feeling of building something new. The skeleton of your new account is waiting for you, urging you on to write for yourself and have the most aesthetically pleasing profile you can manage. No more worrying about disappointing anyone - there's no one to disappoint.
Two, the dull hopeless feeling of shouting into a dark void. The chapter you were so proud of have no views, the profile you spent the last thirty minutes on has no followers and you're getting the itching urge to tell your friends about the secret account you made. There's no response from anyone and you don't know if that's due to your writing or the fact you started the account three hours ago.
I'm very familiar with those feelings.
On my main account I've only ever completed one novel. It did well, not big league 100K reads kind of well, but more so people regularly commented and voted on it kind of well. I was so ready to sweep it under the rug, to move on to something much more exciting and different.
I went into my next three stories with a few unrealistic standards. I wanted them to do well, forgetting that it took time and commitment for my previous novel to get any actual attention. I wanted them to be good, forgetting all the times I rewrote my first novel and all the times I wanted to give up but didn't.
I hate messing people around, switching covers, switching titles, changing beginnings - but for a while nothing felt right. So I did what I had to do, searching and searching for the shoe that fit. It took half a story, a few rewrites, several writers blocks, an incredible amount procrastination and talking at people to get there, but I did.
I wrote my first novel off as a learning experience, forgetting that all novels are learning experiences. You improve as you write. As the great PJ Liguori once said, "You can't make great stuff until you've made good stuff, you can't make good stuff until you've made okay stuff and you can't make okay stuff without making pretty bad stuff."
It's so easy to get caught up in views and comments and criticism. It's too easy to forget how to write for yourself. It's far too easy to forget that you can always go back and change things later, that your harshest critic is usually yourself.
Sometimes, you need to take a step back from everything and ask yourself why you write. Sometimes, shouting into the void for a while helps clear your thoughts. Sometimes, you have to start again to remember why you built yourself up in the first place.
So, I guess that's what this is - isn't it? Shouting into the void and hoping it clears my thoughts. Having a place to post stuff and not care how bad it is. Trying to learn that while it's nice for the void to shout back - to listen, it's not a necessary part of creating something you're proud of.
Kind of like a weird monk, I've gone to meditate in the faraway mountains of Wattpad for a while and that's perfectly bloody fine.
