a crosspost while I was trying to answer Fay and chew gum at the same time

Right. Not me, board and real life type confusions. We're all agreeing really.

Ple, most precious and bootilicious of constellations, what time is it round your way?

3:13.

My rear-ended ass just finished a fairly stiff margarita, and is going to go and watch more sports night now.

And, personally, I consider a rec just as good, if not better, than feedback.

Wrod. A rec is far more than someone saying "I liked your story." A rec is advertising. More to the point, it's advertising that doesn't come across as shameless self-promotion.

What's interesting is comparing this feedback kerfuffle to a similar one that's going on right now in the shoujo anime fic world. Essentially, a few BNFs have received feedback that suggested that certain parts of their writing needed improvement. The BNFs took such criticism as flaming, and things got really ugly after that. One BNF took all of her stuff down off of two major archives and is screaming at another to take her stories down (after flaming the board's owners on their own board )

Meanwhile, it's become next to impossible to get feedback other than the ego-stroking kind. One bit of good feedback I received had with it a "please don't hurt me" tone and was larded with many apologies. I made a point of writing an effusive thank-you note.

Is there a link to the fanwank parade of idiocy?

Sticking only to discussion of things here, because I have zero, make that -10, interest in stupid people.

Feedback as a social/literary phenomenon has been a topic for griping ever since I got into fandom (and probably since fandom went online). The [newsgroup] fandom culture I was in, feedback was quite common -- although even then they griped about not getting enough, fast enough! --, and recs were what you did above and beyond feedback. Then, over time and the transition to lists, recs became more popular, until on one list of mine they were the only kind of feedback some authors got. (The public component of reccing can be used as a social tool/weapon, after all; the general populace doesn't know when you send private feedback.) There were technological innovations, whereby people "feedbacked/recc'd" by mentioning stories to each other in chat sessions. Now? Boards, on which the author may or may not lurk/participate, but on which we, at least, tend to be honest and willing to discuss in public upsides and downsides of a particular story.

To all of which I say: eh. Feedback is nice. I'm sorry the culture has changed, because I've had to learn new social situations a bunch of times. I prefer not to equate story value with social value, because I suck at one of those things, but I can see that some people do equate them. I ignore the rigmarole and go about my business.

I prefer not to equate story value with social value, because I suck at one of those things, but I can see that some people do equate them

An excellent point.

I think the people most fanfic writers are complaining about are those who read something that really touches them, they talk about it all over the place, but they don't drop a line to the writer saying 'I really loved this.'

Which is exactly what I'm guilty of. Bad Lizard.

I save all my feedback, I've got a Yahoo folder just for it that I go into when my ego is fragile. The biggest thing I do is look at all the counters on my website and see how often and how recently someone's read something. And I started all at them at 0, just to see. I tend to giggle a lot when I look at those numbers.

I don't know. I never started writing fic because I wanted someone else to read it. That's, like, a great byproduct. I don't think I could write something simply based on the reply it might get. Then, for me, it loses the magic of the storytelling.

There's a connection between the author writing the story and the audience that will read it; but it's not really been a focus, for me, because I have no clue who'll read it. I mean, I send my fic out to a number of lists, boards, and livejournal. And I get some occasional feedback, often on specific stories in a specific fandom. But the amount of feedback compared with the amount of stories I've written doesn't even compete. And had I been writing just on feedback, I'd've stopped long ago. This isn't to say I don't love feedback, cos I do. I just don't depend on it. It's flighty.

I started out writing for just myself, but soon it wasn't enough of a high. So I showed it to Amy, and for years that was enough. Then, well, the highs weren't so high anymore, so I sneaked it onto a smallish website of a small fandom. That was enough, but, gosh, the highs were crashing faster and faster, and I started writing Buffy stuff. I put it on the board, then the next thing I knew I had my own website.

I don't know, I might need money next to get that high.

Just say no, Connie!