Ada

I was talking about how there was this guy I could never see enough of, I liked him so much but he only deigned, and my therapist said: "Your relationship with him is like my relationship with potato chips. It's not that I can't stop at just one; it's that it's never enough. How I deal with that is just to not eat them in the first place. Because it will never be enough."

Each comment is a delight, but there are never enough! But I can't stop wanting them anyway!

The most important part of this ramble is the conclusion <3!

I check my AO3 statistics obsessively, it's the truth. Here's astolat's take on so-called invisible readers, from (holy shit!) twenty years ago: Confessions of an Invisible Reader (the title refers to an ongoing conversation). I think it's 1) lovely and right, and 2) hard for me, personally, to live up to. I mean: what's hard to live up to is the acceptance of the reality that just a small percentage of readers engage.

I'm not going to censure myself for wishing more readers would engage, or - I've done it - for begging readers to engage (you have to be careful with the tone of the thing!), or for being sad that most readers just don't. I wouldn't wish for readers to feel the obligation to engage any more than I as a writer should have to feel an obligation to post. (I actually do feel an obligation to post, but that's a whole other thing.)

The truth is, I'm going to keep posting as long as I have stuff to post, regardless of the numbers of kudos, bookmarks, and comments my stories get. That's one truth. The other truth, though, is that it would be so incredibly lovely to know that people like what I post - and to feel that I'm reaching people in the first place - and will reach more!

I love/hate the Archive's kudos functionality. On the one hand, I love that there's an easy way for a reader who wouldn't otherwise engage at all to show their appreciation. On the other hand, I hate - and I've done this, back when I was just a reader - that kudos enable scrollers on the Archive to decide whether to click on a story based on the kudos/hits ratio. Searchers, too, often filter/sort by the kudos count (yes, that includes me).

I won't - okay, I will - own up to the mental contortions I perform to try to explain why those ratios on my stories aren't higher. I will, however, spare you the details of those contortions because it would just be sad for us both. ("People don't want to leave kudos because it's non-con!" "People don't want to leave kudos because it's age-difference!" "They don't want to tie their usernames to "problematic" tropes!" As if AO3 readers don't own up to their kinks!)

Of course it's hard not to conclude, from those low ratios, despite all my mental gymnastics, that - hey, most readers just don't like what I write. Or, worse, what I write just isn't good. Thankfully, however, my internal compass doesn't let me go too far down that latter, crazy-making path; I have enough (or too much) trust in my own taste as a reader, if not in my abilities as a writer. My doubts about whether or not I write well are precluded by the simple and fortunate fact that I, for one, like reading my own stories. That sounds so arrogant, I know! But - tangentially, sweepingly, incidentally - can we really do more for ourselves, as writers, than to write things we ourselves like to read?

An important conclusion to this ramble: Readers who do engage, we love you! We love you so much! Thank you for showing your appreciation! It means the world!