Do you get discouraged?
Jul. 12th, 2017 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feng_shui_houseWhen everyone else in a challenge gets gushing comments from their recipient and you get NOTHING? Not a kudos, not a 'thanks for writing'?
2 years ago I signed up for this comm & the fic did great on AO3, so it's not as if it was trash, unworthy of a comment. The recipient was active on AO3 at the time. They put a gushing comment on a gift fic they received in another challenge a couple days after mine. 2 years later I still have got nothing from them.
My own author defaulted at the last minute so I didn't get a fic with anything like the time & thought I put into my own, but I responded to the pinch hitter and thanked them and found something nice to say about their effort. I mean, if you can't even thank a pinch hitter, you're pretty crappy, aren't you?
I didn't sign up again, but left the comm on my flist. A last minute pinch hit request went up this year. I saw it and thought about it. A couple days went by, and I felt bad for this person getting NOTHING, and they actually had a request I thought I could do a nice little fic with, so I claimed it & wrote it, really fast (but still I thought it was really good, even though it's short) getting it in just before the reveals were due.
I didn't know there were a bunch of other fic overdue and the comm organizer was going to put off revealing the archive, and then put it off again. If I had known it was going to have more than another week instead of just a day, I could have done more with the fic, but never mind. It was short, but there were shorter fic NOT as pinch hits, and mine was a complete work, not something chopped off.
Once again, nearly everyone got a comment from the recipient within a day or two. A few other people didn't- but their recipients aren't currently active on AO3. My recipient once again is currently active. They posted a fic the day after the challenge archive went live and responded to comment on their fic. A couple days later they posted another fic. Still not a word on my pinch hit from the recipient.
I could yet get some response from them, but you know, not holding my breath. I'm currently awaiting author reveals, so I can redate it and let people who might like it see it.
If I don't get any acknowledgment from my recipient by the time of author reveals I'm going to remove that comm from my flist. It's not worth making myself unhappy over.
Oh, well... I had signed up for a couple open-ended Bingos. Maybe I'll get motivated to do them.
I should give up on fic gift exchanges entirely. I've never had good luck with them. I usually wind up writing something that I think turns out great and gets good response from everyone EXCEPT the recipient. I also usually wind up with my prompts being last minute defaulted so a pinch hitter does their best with limited time.
I keep telling myself I could at least do pinch hits & get no fic in return, but I'd be making a recipient happy. It seems that doesn't work either.
Maybe this year I'll try another Mathomathon. A mathom is a Hobbit thing- something too nice to throw away, but that you don't actually need. They tended to regift them on their own birthdays to other hobbits. One year I asked my online friends for prompts, and wrote them short fic for my own birthday gifts to them.
2 years ago I signed up for this comm & the fic did great on AO3, so it's not as if it was trash, unworthy of a comment. The recipient was active on AO3 at the time. They put a gushing comment on a gift fic they received in another challenge a couple days after mine. 2 years later I still have got nothing from them.
My own author defaulted at the last minute so I didn't get a fic with anything like the time & thought I put into my own, but I responded to the pinch hitter and thanked them and found something nice to say about their effort. I mean, if you can't even thank a pinch hitter, you're pretty crappy, aren't you?
I didn't sign up again, but left the comm on my flist. A last minute pinch hit request went up this year. I saw it and thought about it. A couple days went by, and I felt bad for this person getting NOTHING, and they actually had a request I thought I could do a nice little fic with, so I claimed it & wrote it, really fast (but still I thought it was really good, even though it's short) getting it in just before the reveals were due.
I didn't know there were a bunch of other fic overdue and the comm organizer was going to put off revealing the archive, and then put it off again. If I had known it was going to have more than another week instead of just a day, I could have done more with the fic, but never mind. It was short, but there were shorter fic NOT as pinch hits, and mine was a complete work, not something chopped off.
Once again, nearly everyone got a comment from the recipient within a day or two. A few other people didn't- but their recipients aren't currently active on AO3. My recipient once again is currently active. They posted a fic the day after the challenge archive went live and responded to comment on their fic. A couple days later they posted another fic. Still not a word on my pinch hit from the recipient.
I could yet get some response from them, but you know, not holding my breath. I'm currently awaiting author reveals, so I can redate it and let people who might like it see it.
If I don't get any acknowledgment from my recipient by the time of author reveals I'm going to remove that comm from my flist. It's not worth making myself unhappy over.
Oh, well... I had signed up for a couple open-ended Bingos. Maybe I'll get motivated to do them.
I should give up on fic gift exchanges entirely. I've never had good luck with them. I usually wind up writing something that I think turns out great and gets good response from everyone EXCEPT the recipient. I also usually wind up with my prompts being last minute defaulted so a pinch hitter does their best with limited time.
I keep telling myself I could at least do pinch hits & get no fic in return, but I'd be making a recipient happy. It seems that doesn't work either.
Maybe this year I'll try another Mathomathon. A mathom is a Hobbit thing- something too nice to throw away, but that you don't actually need. They tended to regift them on their own birthdays to other hobbits. One year I asked my online friends for prompts, and wrote them short fic for my own birthday gifts to them.
