That's funny, Plei. Maybe I'm pretentious, too, Fay. Or maybe the story's both hot and pretentious, like Ralph Fiennes.

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I've been quoted!! Whee!! I'm either going to expire from delight or cognitive dissonance.

"There were arrows on the platform, but you didn't find me thinking about St. Sebastian." snerk!! (It seems to be a day of exclamation marks)

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Oh, don't expire, connie, I need your advice. See Bitchy Fic.

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27 months writing the story. Vicious (but worthy) beta from three machete wielders. Occasional stalking from readers and other members of the writing community. "You're gonna finish this, right?" Final size: 258K, four separate povs, half a dozen original characters. And plot, by god.

1400 hits on the webpage in the first 2 days after it goes up. A couple of emails from people saying, "Is there somewhere I can get the story all together?" Cheers on LJ from a couple of friends.

Total feedback emails: fewer than 10. That's less than 1% of the people who've hit the page to read it.

Why do I do this? Seriously. There's one more big fat part to this story, and I'm just... Feh. Why bother?

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The hits are the feedback, Consuela, keep telling yourself that. For every person who wrote, there are a hundred who were too shy.

Yep, I look at the counter on my website a lot, just to keep myself going. I put counters on each story so I could tell what people read.

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Total feedback emails: fewer than 10. That's less than 1% of the people who've hit the page to read it.

That isn't fun, Suela. It's not right of them. Even allowing that half the poeple have nothing to say or no time to say it in, less than 10 feedbacks isn't good.

{Suela}

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Yep, I look at the counter on my website a lot, just to keep myself going. I put counters on each story so I could tell what people read.

I noticed that! I think I might do it, too.

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I noticed that! I think I might do it, too.

It was easier than paying for a web analysis breakdown, and it seemed relatively unobtrusive.

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I don't have a counter. When I move my site (which, shit, I really should do), I might set something up. I don't know.

I keep reminding myself (about the large projects, that is) that I'm writing things people don't generally like to read about, pairings that seem like I've been hitting the crack pipe, and that I've gotten some very *good* feedback, even if it's been a trickle.

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Consuela, the lack of response has a lot more to do with the gap in publication than anything else. From my experience working in comics, nothing killed off excitement/interest in a storyline quite like irregular publishing.

Which is not to criticize the time-lapse, but just note that people are going to have to rediscover your epic all over again. You lost reader momentum, but they'll find it again. And once they do, it'll start circulating among the enthusiastic recs and folks will spend half a day at work reading it and getting excited about it.

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