Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Insecure Writer: Where's the Love?

When I started this blog in 2012 I got on a schedule of posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I've pretty much kept that up, except last fall when I was posting every day for a while.  Anyway, I'm not sure what happened, but starting in September all the sudden it's like no one read the Friday entry anymore.  I mean for 3 weeks I have a combined 1 comment.  I don't really understand that because again this blog has a set schedule and has pretty much had that for a long time.

So maybe you can help me figure out what the deal is.  It made me a pretty grumpy bulldog (more so) because there seemed no logical basis for it.  I mean do people not like brief movie reviews?  And it's not like I stopped reading the blogs of other people, not even when Tony Laplume tried to move his on me, but that's a whole other ball of WTF.

On another front recently I had a couple of "reviewers" not like books because "the story was a cliche."  To which I sneer and say, "Who do you think invented the cliche, bitch?"  OK, maybe Virginia Woolf.  Or maybe going back to the ancient Greeks, who were pretty messed up and had gods who turned people into all kinds of stuff.  But anyway, I've been writing gender swap books for 4 years, way before it was cool.  The ones in question were over a year old too, so it's likely the "not cliche" ones they read actually came after mine.  It's an extreme example, but it's like if I review a Beatles album and say it's been done a million times.

Besides that I'm like the freaking Baskin-Robbins of that stuff.  I mean my original Transformed series has 15 different flavors and even the stories in those take on different genres and concepts.  One of the ones in question features a story where a guy finds a magic ring that turns him into a female superhero with a talking rabbit sidekick.  You seriously want me to think there's like a shit ton of other stories like that out there?  Go ahead and find one.  My latest one is kind of like a Raymond Chandler mystery with a detective who has been gender swapped and is investigating the gender swapping (and later murder) of someone else.  How many other books are doing that?!

Coming Soon:  Another "cliche" story!


There was someone else who gave me a good star rating on a couple of books, but his "reviews" were all:  I would have done this, I would have done that, etc.  Well, why don't you?  And there was never a reason given for why he would do the things he would do, so I don't see how any of the changes would actually improve the stories in question.

Recently I rewatched an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" from last season where Dennis, the would-be Lothario, finds out that women are rating him badly online.  (And now there's the real-life version of that site with Peeple.)  He gets increasingly desperate to improve his ratings until it pretty much drives him insane.  That's how I feel when it comes to book reviews most of the time.  But at least I own my insecurity, right? 

3 comments:

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

For me, if I don't read someone's blog it's because I don't have the time (usually because things are too busy at work). For the most part, I take a break in the mornings and that's when I can get to going through blogs. But if there's a huge pile up of work, I have to skip my break and it just never gets done.

Cindy said...

In the long run, people can only keep blogging for so long and they start to get tired of it or run out of ideas. So this leads to less commenting on other people’s blogs. Plus Friday (as I said before) is one of the worst days to post. Friday is usually a hectic day at work and when people get home they are eager to do other things, not go on the internet.

There are really only two ways to get a lot of comments. One is that you have to go commenting on other blogs on a regular basis, even if they don’t comment on your blog. You have to keep that schedule up for a few hours a day. This involves actually reading all the blog posts, so the comment can be at least somewhat meaningful because the drive post usually is obvious.

The second way is you have to write on a trending topic or a topic that helps people in some way. I often read blog posts shared on Amazon Kindle on Facebook because it’s writing related and that’s my main interest (of course)

As for movie reviews, I honestly don’t know most of the movies you mention, but I still try to comment.

Arion said...

Cindy is right, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are always very slow days.

As for the movie reviews I always like them!

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