02-02-05 @ 9:16 am EST

Just feeling pointless again. It's been this way for a long time but I never see the point in writing about it, since it's all the same, and writing about it doesn't change anything. It gets tiresome saying the same old thing and watching it never change.

I actually rated and reviewed a couple of items lately--actual writing, not images or something--not that it will matter. These writers will never be interested in me beyond a thank you or perhaps one little review of one chapter of one very long story of mine. I think I will just return to making all my reviews anonymous. This used to be because I feared others getting angry over my suggestions for improvement. Nowadays it's because, why leave your name on a review when the person will not bother stopping by in return? I realize I'm guilty of the same thing. But it's tiring to see all these other fantasy authors and items, many of them sporadic and perpetually unfinished, getting attention in some strange mysterious way and meanwhile here I am putting out chapter after chapter and nobody even notices. (I actually got one of those "I'll-review-Part-One-but-never-come-back-for-the-rest" reviews from a newbie a little while back, and when I said thanks, he expressed a hope in me reviewing one of his items...why?? He already has a publishing contract with a major publisher, and both of his then-existing items--both new--already had four or five ratings each. I have stories and chapters from MONTHS ago with no ratings, and I am certainly not getting published. What could he expect ME to help him with? He's apparently already doing something right while I'm not!) It's hard to be proud of a serial you've worked on for so long when nobody's reading it, nobody mentions it as a favorite or links to it from anywhere (I check...pathetic as that is), and it's never mentioned anywhere else. (Oh...I did see ONE mention of it...as the favorite item of somebody else on the site, in an interview with her. To paraphrase, she claimed it was so good she could not stop reading it. And?...I have not heard from her in months. So much for it being so good.) I actually had somebody write to beg me to update my MI website after I had neglected to do so for a few months, which surprised me, since I hadn't thought anybody was even reading it. I had not actually forgotten about the site; I just felt, why waste the time? (Pretty much what I've been feeling here for a long time at Writing.com now.) But she actually wrote and then asked me to look at HER story. *sigh* I agreed to, and...she has not written back. Now look at that. Even people who write to ME first, and beg me to read THEIR writing, don't write back! How great a story is it when people care for it that little? How great is ANYTHING I write?

I made brief mention of this in a forum recently, why I believe I am not as good a writer as I once thought. Well, it's true. I do fully believe I'm better at the technical details of writing than most people here, and better at characterization and such. But none of that is the point. GOOD writing, TRULY good writing, is writing that other people actually want to read. And not just read one part of and say, "This is really good!"...but KEEP coming back to read it. Writing that makes people antsy and sad when there isn't an update to it in a reasonable amount of time. THAT is the measure of good writing. And I don't do that. I USED to do that, but I haven't really done it in months. The people who I thought for sure would be die-hard readers have all drifted away, which is why I am so leery now whenever somebody shows up and claims to love a story of mine...all I can think is, how long before THIS one loses interest, too? I hate to be so distrustful, but none of the other people I trusted for months has ever come back. And they, too, were all so encouraging and enthusiastic, at least in the beginning...one was even writing a fanfic of my story...she stopped working on it, reviewing my story, and writing to me, just like that, and I have not heard from her in over a year. She stopped by a few times to update her journal and say how bored she was, but never had another word for me. She had been so encouraging before. I would ask her to take that fanfic down now, if I felt she even logs on enough to care. Why did I even think anyone would be interested enough to WRITE about my story, when people can't even READ the things I write.

Anyway...to get back to the beginning of the above paragraph, I got a response to that post along the lines of, "You're a great writer, Tehuti. I know that for a fact!"

Well, it was nice that somebody noticed it, but...how am I supposed to take that post seriously, when this is somebody who does not read my work, and has not commented on any of my work in months, if not years? (I may be wrong here but I can only go on what I can observe. HITS to a work do not equal READERS of a work. COMMENTS are the only accurate measurement.) How can somebody HONESTLY sit there and say I am such a great writer if THEY themselves are not somebody who is entranced by my work, or even just entertained? How am I supposed to believe a comment like that when I have the daily lack of comments and readers to go on, versus that one post? I'm sorry but I've always believed more in stats than in claims. And the stats are very few and far between. Remember all the students in high school who claimed I was such a great writer yet I know for a fact that NONE of them had ever read a word I wrote? Sound familiar? Upon what were they basing their claim? Because they certainly weren't basing it on my writing.

I still remember the mod who e-mailed me one day to say, "I miss your work!" And all I could think was, my port is full of it! What do you mean, you MISS it? It's always been there! I even let her know...um, my work is still there to be read. And I'm still putting out new stuff, if that's what she meant. There's no reason to miss it. She never replied. And so, HOW much did she miss it, then...?

And I just sit here, logging off day after day and writing more in the morning, and at night when I grow even more upset all I can think of what I wrote the day before is...why did I even bother? Why don't I just keep it in my head, or at least, keep the typing to myself, for all how much the world cares for it? It would be nice to make money off of my writing though I've never viewed that as a reasonable goal. Mostly what I wanted to do was entertain. I wanted to be a storyteller, somebody who takes what little she has, turns it into words, and puts them out there so other people can see them and take something from reading them. I wanted to distract people, to draw them away from daily mundane things, to let them escape from all the things I've used writing to escape from. I wanted to use my own joy and pain to make others feel at least a little bit better. And for a little while, it worked. But it isn't anymore. Either people just don't WANT to escape, or I'm not any good at it anymore, if I ever was. It doesn't matter how well you string words together or form sentences and paragraphs and chapters. If people aren't reading it, you're not serving your purpose. I'm not entertaining anybody if nobody is reading it. And that takes away any meaning any of my writing might have had.

I do write for me. I always will. Why do I sit here and keep writing it when chances are heavily against me that anybody will care? Because I love to do it. But along with that feeling now just comes this feeling of wasting my time and hopes on something useless. And I have always HATED wasting my time, even if it's on something I like to do. I used to think writing was the ONE thing I did with any bit of talent at all. Now even that I can't do right. And that makes me completely useless. I just feel like I've lost my entire meaning for being here at all. How are you supposed to reassure yourself when you have nothing of use left to give? I feel like I'm placing tiny present after tiny present on a big table, and hoping people will come along and take them, but nobody's interested, they just keep walking by, and I just stand there useless. I apologize to sound so bigheaded as to think my writing is grand or good enough to be PRESENTS, but that's the only way I can describe it--I put it out there and offer it to other people, freely, even though I know it's dinky and practically meaningless...but I had hoped that at least it was worth a tiny diversion. It isn't, and that's a crushing feeling. I have tried and I can't even BRIBE people to be interested. That's how worthless my one talent is.

And I could sit here and just keep writing for me, but knowing how worthless it all is now, it takes away a lot of the joy I used to get from doing this. I'm getting very close to a very big and exciting (IMO) chapter of TAC and yesterday I worked on a new and exciting chapter of RTMI--I've been writing a lot more lately than I have been in a long time--and perhaps a year or so ago, this would have made me feel really good about myself (when nothing ELSE ever makes me feel good about myself). Even back then I had only a tiny handful of people following what I wrote but it was still something. Now, faced with month after month after month of putting up chapters...and nobody noticing...the joy of writing it all just shrinks and I think of how much time and space I am wasting.

Did you ever get a feeling of joy from spending time with a friend of yours--going on some sort of adventure as a kid? Did you ever try adventuring on your own, with your friend gone, and found out it just wasn't the same? It didn't have that same feeling to it, that grandness, that adventuring WITH somebody had, did it? A lot of the joy came from sharing it with somebody else, right? What is the point in pretending, in adventuring, in telling a story, when there is nobody there to share it with you, right?

Well, it feels like that. I can love writing to death but if nobody else is ever going to see it, it takes away a lot of that joy, that sense of adventure. While I wrote those two stories yesterday I felt all excited to be actually getting to these parts of them, parts of the stories I have been waiting to reach for a long time. Yet after logging online last night and facing a site where I post this stuff, just one of many sites where I post this stuff, and people do not notice it, it was like facing that adventure and realizing I was totally alone. Nobody is going to share it with me. Nobody is interested, and a story just isn't much of a story when there is nobody to tell it to. It's writing without a point. It's just squiggles on a screen.

You do know the old saying about the tree falling in the woods, and there is nobody there to hear it--does it still make a sound? My own answer to that question has always been yes and no. The tree DOES make a sound--what can be technically referred to as a sound--the vibrating soundwaves which go through the air. BUT, without a listening EAR there to RECEIVE the soundwaves...could you really call that a "sound"? The answer...is no. A sound is only a sound when there is something there to HEAR it--a receptive eardrum that the soundwaves can bounce off of. Otherwise, it is just soundwaves, something totally meaningless, which may as well not even exist. The meaning of a sound lies in the fact that it IS a sound, that it is HEARD. If it's not heard, it has no point, no context. It may as well not be a sound.

That's what my writing feels like. I can put all these words on a page, and they mean something to me, but when I put them out there and no eyes look at them, can you even call that writing? For all I know, and am really starting to believe, it's just words, stupid and meaningless without readers to give them meaning. My writing may as well not even exist if there is no one to read it. Because other people reading it, and escaping in it, was a huge part of my reason for writing it in the first place. Unlike the tree which fell, I had a reason for writing all that stuff, but the result is the same and now I wonder if I should have even bothered writing it all in the first place for how little it means.

I know it's not healthy to place so much of the meaning of my writing upon others' reaction to it--but seriously! How much good is the storyteller who has no listeners? What would YOU think of a person who sits down to tell a story, and there is nobody there but them? Doesn't that sound at least a little bit crazy, and pointless?

It's the same with me sitting down and typing, and posting my writing, every day. Why even do it? Even a rat will stop pushing a lever for food when it is not rewarded enough times. Why can't I just learn the same way, and stop?

I even have the occasional incredibly foolish and stupid belief that writing is my way of honoring God, or whatever Being there is out there watching over us. Forgive me for my stupid tackiness; I should redeem myself in a minute for even considering such stupid thoughts. IMO everyone can honor their idea of God by doing the thing they do the best, with the most heart and passion--painting a picture, taking a photograph, writing a poem, running a race. Even walking a trail or watching birds, or working on a model airplane, or doing yoga. Anything you do that brings you the greatest amount of happiness, that makes you feel most at peace in the world. If you do that with God in mind--and maybe even without--that is a way of honoring Him, because you're making the most of the one thing that makes you happiest, and doing it with all your heart, and it is my opinion that if God loves anything it is when we are happy and putting all our heart and meaning into something. You don't even have to dedicate it to Him, just as long as you do your best and take some joy from doing it. (Even take a look at the Bible itself, the story of Cain and Abel's offerings. I bet Abel put all his heart into tending to his sheep, so why else would God have loved his offering so much? Of course, that's for those of you who believe in the Bible, something which I am pretty uncertain about in many respects...) In fact I like to think this is one reason WHY we enjoy the things we do when we put our heart into them, because it's drawing us a little bit closer to God. It is my opinion that He wants us happy and so of course, doing the thing that makes us happiest would bring us close. In my stupid moments, I liked to think I was doing that with my writing.

I liked to think that when I put as much work as I could into a story, making sure every word was as good as I could get it, every chapter as entertaining as I could make it, everything as well written as I could do, and each part adding up to more of the whole, that was my way of honoring Him. Much better than prayer or church, because those just make me feel selfish and uncomfortable whereas writing was the one thing that made me happiest and made me feel most useful. It's the one thing that gave me any meaning as a person. I especially liked the thought that when I told these stories, I could bring to life figures people might not have ever heard of or known about had I not written these, characters from mythology, and made them more realistic, more approachable and understandable, to other people. I liked to think I was a storyteller who brought these people to life again when they had pretty much died or gone dormant over the years and that was my way of celebrating them and entertaining other people in the process. Yes...I had a stupid big head. I'm rapidly losing heart in this idea, because you cannot be a storyteller without listeners. And even though I believe God does not care whether you have listeners or readers or not--just as long as you put all your heart into what you do--like I already said, if there is no one reading, my writing has no meaning, and I do not feel I could honor God with something that has no meaning, even to me. Like I said--a great deal of the meaning in my writing comes from the mere fact of other people being entertained by it. All that meaning is lost without those people. That meaning has been lost for a long time. Every day I sit down to write I just feel more and more frustrated. I should just stop pushing that lever. A stupid old rat would've stopped long ago.

I guess I was always dumb and desperate that way. I wish I would learn to at least keep my writing to myself, and make it meaningful to me alone, at least. I still would not be a storyteller...not an entertainer...I probably would not even be a writer, the one thing I always wanted to be...and I would most certainly be useless then...but at least *I* would still enjoy it. For the time being, I enjoy it while I'm writing it, but all the rest of the time it just feels like some stupid adventure I went on and now I have nobody to tell about it. And that makes it pretty pointless, and not much of an adventure after all. So now you can see why it feels like a great waste of time. Why go adventuring when all the adventure is gone?