Your Audience Wants to Like You

You are an artist. You are afraid of heckling on the internet. But if you’re gonna overcome the block and put anything out there, you either have to throw all caution to the wind or hold strong in the conviction that your audience wants to like you.

If you’re reading this, you use the internet. The internet exposes us to a lot of…

• heckling
• hatereading
• “lolcows” and the people who write essays about how “cringe” their stuff is
• the absolute best literature on the planet as well as the absolute worst
• your near-zero amount of Likes. (It’s constantly visible!)

And if I can be any evidence here, this leads us to a lot of…

• fear
• fear
• fear
• fear that someone somewhere out on the internet will laugh at us every night and never forget our name
• fear that someone will doxx us
• the crushing realization that our work sucks
• the constant realization that we have no Likes

The internet encourages a lot of unhealthy practices and a lot of insincerity. There are real cases of people’s identities being exposed just because a stranger thought it would be hilarious to do so. It’s terrifying. It’s completely true.

If you’re determined to create online, then you have to create in spite of this. I give this advice not to pretend that horror stories never happen, but to remind you that horror stories are retold more often than they happen.

To lighten the mood some: before there was a single hatereader of Twilight, there were many, many loving readers of Twilight. And there were “meh” readers, readers who liked some parts but didn’t like others, and readers who enjoyed it while having many points of well-meaning critique. Before anyone read it just so that they could make fun of it, they read it genuinely hoping they would enjoy it.

You kind of have to hold firm in the belief that before you begin to attract hate, a sincere audience will come: readers who are open and receptive, who are generally reasonable people.

You also have to believe that that audience wouldn’t be here at all if the work totally sucked. Some would say that even a hatereader is a reader, “all publicity is good publicity,” and so on, but I don’t mean that. I mean that generally you shouldn’t even pay them attention. You probably have a “target audience” in mind, one containing your most sincere readers; focus on them.

Yes, you do have a soul-destroyingly low amount of Likes. I would give you the old adage that quality is better than quantity, but everyone’s situation is different. Maybe you somewhat believe that adage, but you also need to make money or reach a personal goal. Maybe you need to become part-marketer, begrudgingly. When you wear your artist hat, though, you just have to keep plugging away. If you believe that your audience wants to like you, that will help greatly.

Those who want to like you are actively searching for new and great work. If you’re an indie artist (and if you’re reading the blog of me, a random indie artist, I assume you are), they probably see you as an “underdog” and understand that your work doesn’t necessarily have corporate polish. This is an advantage, actually, because I think we’re glutted with corporate polish, and while sequels, remakes, and familiar franchises are necessary evils (people in those corporations gotta eat, and to sell their projects, they do need some guaranteed buy-in), your audience is looking for a change. We know that because they chose to go out looking for works like yours rather than, say, watch a blockbuster film.

Your audience wants to like your idiosyncracies; they know you’re not generic product from a focus-group blender.

Yes, your audience has big expectations for you. They want to not only like you, but trust you. They want to believe…

• that this story is firmly in your hands.
• that you have big plans for this from beginning to end (or will develop them from scattered notes by the seat of your pants).
• that you genuinely want to tell the best story you can.
• that you aren’t merely checking boxes.
• that you have what they call “a vision.”
• that you have a knack for pulling out ideas that are interesting, beautiful, and true.

This can be intimidating, but I think it’s a hell of a lot better than focusing on all the ways a truly determined hatereader can bully you. I mean, at least it’s actionable, and it always helped me to focus on things that are actionable. I can’t improve the attitude of an internet troll, but I think I can improve my craft by envisioning my ideal readers.

What are my setups and payoffs? What are the soulful or cool parts of my story that I believe will resonate with others? Am I staying true to a great vision?

You may as well be guided by something that really motivates you, and I never was motivated by the pure, somewhat defeatist determination of “so what if people hate it.”

Writing Accountability Corner

I use these blog posts to keep myself on track for writing Catgirl System and perpetually fall short of my own standards. First off, I’m slipping on my blog-posting schedule. True, I did have a big family situation recently (wow, what a vague euphemism that is), but despite all the stress of that, the fact that I spent a lot of that time sitting with very relaxed posture in calming environments means I don’t feel very good about what little work I did, and how slowly.

Last week, I finished 3 out of a projected 3 chapters. So far, so good. I wanted to do 3 chapters again this week. Instead, I’ve finished 2! But there’s hope: I still have like 40 minutes before midnight tonight! We’ve got time!!!

Well, I’ve decided to change my current writing goal from “polish 3+ chapters of Catgirl System every week” to “polish 1 chapter of Catgirl System every day.” I believe that as long as I ration out an hour a day to do this (time I currently have on hand), I can actually do this. I still have a Patreon backlog for upwards of a month, and yet it’s getting slim enough to be scary.

When I actually get into the groove of writing and welding the old plot points together with a fresher coat of paint (sorry for mixed metaphor; all painters and welders weep), I do enjoy it. So that’s not the problem. I think that the moment I begin falling behind schedule, I start getting overwhelmed.

There’s also the fact that I keep starting other abortive secret projects. These can be WILDLY fun, but in this case, the things I started in the past two weeks were also wildly frustrating. And I didn’t even finish!

For now, I have to remain a loyal page to Sir Catgirlsystem (I guess the story is a “sir” now?) and keep this story as the main priority and guiding light.

Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.

I’ve talked in the past about the ups and downs of my productivity (what a loaded word, right?) and feeling beaten down by intrusive thoughts. But hey, I know what you like. I’ve also talked about Blondie. Not the band. The movies based on the comic. But wait…also the band?