sierralee
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October 6 Update
🕑 Added 2024-10-06 17:00:08 +0000 UTCAlright, time for a long overdue post catching up on a number of secondary things. This one is going to end up more negative than positive, so skip the bottom section if you don't want that.
Cognosticon Retrospective
I'm not sure how to feel about this year's new work as Cognosticon. Or rather, I know exactly how I feel and I'm trying to decide how much weight to place on those feelings. On one hand, I want to make professional decisions based on long term evaluation, but on the other, I'm a creator instead of in a normal job in large part due to those subjective feelings of fulfillment.
Depthless Hunger exploded in popularity faster than any of my other projects, including Patreon growth... and then it stalled. I don't want to be ungrateful for an above-average level of success, but right now the project is not worth it in terms of hours of work and especially stress.
Royal Road is one of my least favorite sites on the internet, yet it's one of the only ones that offers real visibility to new creators instead of funneling everyone toward the winner-take-all algorithms of the internet. I don't want to rant too much, but a significant portion of the userbase has substantially different values than I do for stories and interacting with them is frustrating enough that I'd say it lowers my quality of life. Now, I lead a very fortunate life and this is nothing compared to the stress of a truly bad job, but it still rankles as the worst part of my day.
The thing is, I don't want to throw in the towel too early. Out of a creator's desire to finish what I start, yes, but also because this might be too early. The experiment has been going on for about a year... most of the ultra popular stories had already reached their peak by that point, but web serials have a lot of sleeper readers who wait to binge longer stories.
When I get frustrated, I frequently think about The Weirkey Chronicles: it performed poorly at the beginning, but now it's the plurality of my income. TLS was also running against the grain and I received a lot of negative feedback that made my goals feel fundamentally futile, but it changed the course of my career. I cannot know whether this is stopping prematurely or a sunk cost fallacy.
Then again, in recent months I've also discovered with TWC how a project that brought me a lot of creative joy can become an unpleasant chore. I thought I had built an audience different from the mainstream of progression fantasy and I've learned that I hadn't really, I suppose is a good lesson to learn, but my week gets just a bit worse every Saturday. It reminds me of the old Taoist proverb where fortune keeps swinging from positive to negative, so who can say?
Traditional Publication
I don't think I mentioned it here, but last year I wrote another science fiction novel and I've been trying to shop it around since. No hits. T-T People can talk about craft or the industry all day, but it's the middle layer of agents that has me stuck.
This whole step is my least favorite part of the process by far and, if this isn't too judgmental, I feel like querying communities are a bit of a cargo cult. Everyone convinced that their queries aren't getting responses because they had the wrong format or used slightly passive voice in one sentence, then successful queries are, "ey, yo, it's like fantasy with drugs and shit". I'm not convinced agents are a good filter, it's just that publishers want some filter between themselves and everyone desperate to create, and this is the one that exists.
I don't know, maybe I'm too old in my early thirties. There's so much work I respect, from past decades to now, but the new work getting picked up these days is largely not my sort of thing. When I research agents, I see so many people younger than me waxing rhapsodic about books I didn't like and it makes it hard to keep going.
Yes, I could self-publish this too, but self-pubbed SF doesn't sell unless it's engineering wish fulfillment, and that's not what I write. What I really want is more eggs in more baskets to help secure my creative future: big publishers aren't your friend, but Amazon absolutely isn't either. If Patreon ever goes bad, I don't want to have to be posting GoFundMes with "Remember the lady that made TLS? Help her not starve!"
To be clear, I'm doing fine, I just love this career and want to make as certain as possible that I can keep doing it even through massive hits. Nothing in life is certain, after all.
A Digression
It's possible that some people may be thinking the problem is me, in the vein of "If everyone you meet is an asshole, you might be the asshole." Yes, possibly. Some people seem much better suited to a public career in various ways, and obviously the current environments are servicing a large audience.
This is who I am, though. I am moderately good at letting things slide off me or pass through my mind, but I cannot convince myself that I like things I don't. It is entirely possible this is just the price of being successful enough to have anyone care about your work and I need to get over it. I try to limit the number of complainy posts per year, and this is one. =P
New Attempts
Anyway, like I said, I'm not giving up yet. I will definitely find the motivation to write the tenth TWC book eventually. As for Depthless Hunger, I am going to be making several new attempts to boost the story, from promotion to side content to a book release. That last one should probably have happened already, actually, but I have been continually prioritizing TLS so it got put off.
One new thing is that the Cognosticon Patreon now has side stories, including some erotica. I'd say that's good for my erotica fans, but they won't make sense unless you're familiar with the story. Putting those out did produce an immediate measurable boost, but it's hard to say what the long term impact will be.
Currently I've promised through the fourth arc, which will take me into 2025. There's a potential off-ramp after the fifth, because that will wrap up a large percentage of the story elements before opening up a new section. I want to be a creator who finishes things, though, and I don't like accepting the fact that it seems I easily become bitter and disgruntled.
I've turned things negative again. =/ Really, my intent here was to say that I'm on top of things and giving this a real shot.
Side Game Projects
In 2024 I have made good progress on TLS, but it has come at the cost of side projects I'd hoped to incubate more before the conclusion. I don't think this is ideal, but when projects stall while I wait on other things, I put more time back into TLS and it just keeps happening.
There are some interesting seeds, definitely. I could show you some fun concept art and talk about ideas that I think will excite people here. But nothing is really at a point where I can deliver significant content to patrons after the point where I don't have any more TLS to give because the project is finished.
This might deserve its own post, actually. Eventually you will hear about more of these ideas, but I want to do that sort of thing:
1) After significant TLS progress
2) Once the projects are in a mature state where I can make promises
When writing things are frustrating, my creative energies float in the other direction, so I am actually exploding with new ideas for games. It's taking significant effort not to go chasing tangents and keep myself focused. But I want to assure people that, despite the negatives expressed here, I am brimming with passion for future projects. ^-^
TLS 0.76.0
I have made significant progress on the final optional dungeon. I wanted to surprise everyone and say it's coming out Friday, but it looks like that won't happen. This week I just got dragged down by a number of distractions, from complex bugs to strange offers to personal stuff. We are getting close, though!
Comments
Sierra Lee
I appreciate that, and do try to keep it in mind. Best of luck in your own communities.
Ark Tolei
I'm really sorry you're having such a difficult time with your various audiences. I can empathize. I have some experience with creating a community that feels very alienating to be around. I find it useful to remember that behind the community there's an audience that appreciates your work in total silence. It doesn't make the harassment any easier to deal with, but people who comment at all are a minority, and they're a minority with a selection bias for certain attitudes. I think you've always been very generous with your time with your community, and very diplomatic when talking about your frustrations. It's extremely difficult to imagine you as an asshole. After catching up on the plane I've been able to keep up to date with the public chapters of DH and I'm looking forward to the release of the next Weirkey book.
Sierra Lee
I appreciate this message - I really do appreciate most comments, but I'm especially glad to hear from you. ^-^ It's possibly that I'm unduly influenced by complaints, and I certainly hope there are lots of readers like you who are enjoying this book. It's an issue of specific complaints echoing my primary issues with this subgenre, which makes me feel like readers won't be up for any of the more complicated things I want to do with the series. Thank you for your support!
Drifted
I'm sorry to that things haven't been going the way you were hoping with some of your writing projects and that you seem to be feeling a bit burnt out :( I typically don't read the comments on posts, so I am not sure whether it is just general negativity or a more specific criticism that has you down, but for my own part "Skyvenom" is shaping up to be one of my favourite volumes in the series -- indeed, I feel like there are several story threads you have been setting up in earlier volumes that are on the cusp of paying off now. I genuinely look forward to your Saturday morning posts (Waiting two weeks for the next one will be rough, though I don't begrudge you taking a break under the circumstances!) and I sincerely hope that you are able to get yourself mentally back to a place where you are enjoying working on "The Weirkey Chronicles" again. I personally also hope you do see some success finding an avenue into traditional publishing, as I still very much prefer to read physical books rather than web serials. In fact, I am pretty sure I have in some past comment advocated for hardcovers if possible :D I've only read six web serials in total, of which "Depthless Hunger" and "The Weirkey Chronicles" are two of only three ongoing series. So I mostly dislike using Royal Road from a purely mechanical perspective, and I don't really have a sense of what you mean when you mention your values regarding stories in contrast to that of the userbase. I do have a distant relative who has tried to break into the traditional publishing industry without success though, so I can to an extent appreciate the difficulties involved in that and why it might be necessary to work with sites such as Royal Road and more generally to self-publish online. (Also I only now realised that you have a separate Patreon page for "Depthless Hunger", so I will look into signing up for that over the weekend!)
Sierra Lee
Haha, I underestimated how strong the reactions to the Fuckball joke would be. You're far from the only one. As for my SFW content: hope you enjoy! I do something different with each project, but you'll definitely see some common elements with my work.
AspyreVenar
I'm not surprised at all! Your characters make it very easy to connect and invest with the world. My wife loves Carina, she herself is a chaplain, so she saw a lot of herself in Carina. I have to say, my biggest complaint is Fuckball, that rug pull ;-; I was utterly destroyed. But a truly spectacular job, I just found your sfw stuff and I'm definitely going to check out your novels, you're a huge inspiration for me.
Sierra Lee
Hello, thank you for your comment and support! It's nice that the game has reached players over the years, and I'm always happy to hear from couples playing together. ^-^ There are more than you might think!
AspyreVenar
Hey Sierra, I'm glad to hear from you. I've been following TLS since it's very early days, when it ended when you reached Yhilin and have always loved it. I've written a few steam reviews praising the art and the story and the sheer cerebral level of design, both as a game and as a story. Sadly, TLS has always been my own private joy as I've been unable to really share it with my friends and family. I recently had the privilege to get married and have been able to share TLS with my wife, and we've recently clocked over 450 hours on steam, we've explored from the darkest timelines to the brighest, cheating and not cheating both. We love the game and the characters and love what you've done with the world and just wanted to praise you as a writer and a creator. I know this doesn't exaclty soothe the woes you're going through, but I hope that it does reinforce your hope in what you are doing and that there's always going to be people that love what you do and will support you as much as we possibly can.
Sierra Lee
Thanks, I appreciate that support! I hope to be around making things for a long time to come. ^-^
Sierra Lee
This is a pretty ordinary bug, so I'm surprised it has lasted this long! Thanks for the report.
Captain Hair
Sent a pm, but here's a bugged textbox I found in the current release. https://imgur.com/a/zf6FqJv
Lordware
As someone who mostly gets their entertainment from gaming, I sadly can't comment on the RR stuff. However, as someone who has been following you since around 2016, I think, and has played TLS enough that it comfortably sits in my Steam library's top 11 for playtime, with over 250 hours—alongside games like Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Skyrim, while also being free—I can say that your writing is great. TLS has been one of my favorite RPGs for a long time, and I will 100% look forward to any gaming-related content from you after TLS.
Annikath
That makes sense to me. I hope there can be a solution, either way! ^^
Sierra Lee
It's a tricky question and not something I've solved. Some things are too personal, but not all - the trouble is finding the right person, because while anyone can use social media, only some people are actually good at it. The creators I know who hired someone unknown mostly felt it was not worth it, while those who made things work mostly seemed to hire close friends and family.
Figaro0014
The great thing about writing is that you’re never too old. Look at GRRM before he got his big break. I think what I’ve learned about prepping my work for traditional publishing is that it takes tons of persistence, and it’s better to keep creating other things while you wait so that if you are picked up, old projects get new life. I hope you don’t give up on it.
Annikath
Hello, thanks for the in-depth post! I don't know much at all about publishing literature or the work that is involved with that, but I can definitely relate to the frustration that comes with repeatedly having to do tasks that are adjacent to what you want to be doing, but not at all fulfilling or are even seriously frustrating, like promotion and correspondence. I want to eventually hire someone to work part-time for me who can do those sort of tasks for me, especially promotion on social media (I hate doing that). And I was curious if you think maybe the time and energy you have to sink into those tasks could be outsourced to an assistant? If you had a trusted aide who could do all of the frustrating stuff for you, maybe it would help you feel better about what you're creating? I'm reasonably sure you've probably considered something like that before, and I assume perhaps you feel like your work and attached decisions are too personal to give them to someone else to do for you, but I wanted to ask anyways. ^^
Nicholas
I'm sorry to hear things have been rough. I know when I saw the comments on Depthless Hunger it bothered me, I can't imagine how grating it was for an actual author. It does make me sad that the site is so full of people who think of a character facing great adversity before triumphing as "misery porn". In general I'm pretty happy with whatever direction you go, its the quality of your writing that I enjoy, the genre is pretty irrelevant to me. IMHOP it's o.k. to be an asshole sometimes. World sucks a lot of the time, its not a big failing that sometimes it can get to people. I certainly think that edge of hating the world adds a lot of charm to your work, for what it is worth. Just to be extremely sappy though, in my opinion a major theme of TLS is that acknowledging something horrible does not mean surrendering to it, and acknowledging awful things is the first step in fixing them.
Sierra Lee
Yeah, it seems to be rough on everyone, even the people who are writing the most mainstream RR content. I do try to keep this in mind and persist.
Sierra Lee
Thank you, I hope that you enjoy them!
Sierra Lee
Yeah, I'm not just trying to be humble when I say I'm bad at promotion: it's a skill and I don't have it. Finding people to help with this seems to be very difficult, though, as it's even easier to claim to be a marketer than to claim to be a writer. This is something that game publishers are supposed to do, and allegedly can do a good job of, so I'd be willing to take a hit on profits for that. Unfortunately, publishers only seem to look at pitches from full teams, so I don't have access to this option yet.
Sierra Lee
I appreciate this more than you know! Writing cultures is one of my favorite parts of any project, so it's always nice when people enjoy them. ^-^ I can't say for sure what directions I'll be able to go, but I can definitely keep moving forward thanks to your support!
Darthjake
I've really enjoyed The Weirkey Chronicles, I keep meaning to read that novel you linked a while back on Royal Road, but keep getting sidetracked, I promise I will eventually read it, it seems like a very cool premise the powerless guy struggling. All I can say is keeping being and doing who you are, you converted me to TLS back when it was text only, and while I'm overjoyed with the work Annikath has done, I would have still enjoyed it as it was. I came for the Pron, but stayed for the Sx. :D
Sierra Lee
I do truly appreciate that I've found some people who enjoy my work as a whole and never want to seem ungrateful for that. It's a real pleasure that isn't reflected in my more negative posts. My fear is that I would somehow end up frustrated anywhere, but yes, I do think there could be spaces where I could more easily do the work that interests me. You will be interested in a future post I have half-written about long term career stuff.
Sierra Lee
Wow, you don't comment often, but you have supported me from nearly the beginning! Glad that TLS has held your interest that long, and sorry that DH hasn't. Thank you for your support.
AF
Shoot, sorry to hear about that! For what it's worth, I follow five other authors who post on Royal Road, and I have heard similar complaints from four of them. One author I follow half-jokingly talks about rewriting her entire story with a more RR-friendly POV character to see how much better it would do. The website just seems like a tough place to make artistically interesting story decisions.
Spaaaaace
Sorry to hear of your troubles. I bought the current TWC books on audible ands hope to listen to them soon.
Sierra Lee
The positive things you say are true, and I try to focus on those (it's my most successful series by any metric). The difficulties are 100% from the reactions to the book 9 chapters being posted on Patreon. That said, I thank you for your support.
Runcible Technician
Still my favorite author and creator on the internet. I'll support your different projects however I can within my limited means. At the moment Depthless Hunger is my favorite btw.
Hansworth
I was surprised to hear that you’re facing troubles even with the writing of TWC. As far as I can tell, the launch of book 8 and free sale of the series was a success. So I assume these difficulties currently stems from the writing process of book 9. I’m sorry to hear that and want to say that I still eagerly anticipate the full release on KU.
Decarabia
Thank you for the long post, I really appreciate it. Even if you feel they might be too negative, I can say selfishly that the way you articulate them is very interesting and insightful. I hope things work out despite all the struggles. The uncertainty of not knowing whether you need to invest less or more into a project is frightening x_x It feels to me that you always could use some extra help with promotion. I don't want to be another asshole in the comments (and anyone feel free to call me out), but in my limited/ignorant view it seems like you need a lot more of aggressive tactics to reach the success you envision. In my eyes you are a successful creator, a rare combination of a genius in their field with respectable values. I truly believe that. But, like you said, you can't change what you like, and you cannot help but make art that goes against the norm, such as with breaking the tropes and all that. So, your self-promotion skill gets you to a certain point, but it gets nerfed due to your class, and so you need some potions to catch up (what am I even saying...). Of course, sucessful works are not just the result from the combination of quality+ads, we all know there are a plethora of factors out of our control. Even so, some part of me still thinks there is always more you could do in that front. Again, I'm sorry if my naive ass is just saying stuff that you already thoroughly think about and act on for a long time. Even in this post itself you mention that you will be making several new attempts to boost it. That's great. What I mean to invite thought is, just as people underestimate writing as a skill and think they can manage this on their own, leading sometimes to worrisome results, see if you aren't doing just that with advertising and what's around it.
Lord Forte
I think, to an extent, there's always a tradeoff between the concessions one needs to make to appeal to an outgroup and the things that make something appealing to us. Some people's own natural in-group is broadly aligned with a wider swath of the population than others, so those people will always have an easier time treading the path to general acceptance. For those of us who are more unusual, there's more of a tradeoff here. Since people who are more similar to us rarely have their tastes catered to, the tradeoff here is more salient--things we could do for general appeal often make things less appealing to our natural core audience of people like us very hungry for something that satisfies us. But sticking to the core of our appeal creates, I would say, more dedicated fans among a smaller group. I know you walk the line on this a decent amount, trying to balance the two, and I think on the whole your success speaks to doing that effectively. But, if I can say, though our tastes are not 100% in alignment, they are pretty close, and so I'm someone who deeply appreciates the fact that your work does, on average, stay true to that inclination, I'm deeply appreciative. When I first found TLS, it felt like an oasis in a desert--finally, something I could truly appreciate, without much reservation. You know how much that's influenced me, but I'm sure I'm far from the only one who feels similarly. Like I said, these tastes are rarely catered to, something I think you understand based on your own comments about finding more common things unsatisfying. So, for whatever it's worth, you have my thanks for swimming upstream this way. It definitely isn't easy, especially in the current oversaturated market for independent creativity, but I do think what you've done creates a lot of value for those of us who appreciate it.
Sierra Lee
Didn't mean to make anyone feel negative, but I feel like I should post a frank overview of my current position sometimes.
lostone2
That has been a bit painful to read to me, so first of all, I hope that it gets better soon. As time passes I'm less and less confident in my chances to provide any kind of meaningful or interesting feedback. Having said all of that, I have seen complaints from I think successful writers (Actus and Blaise Corvin comes to mind) regarding the userbase so you are not alone. Others just ignore the comments section and I cannot say that it's probably a healthy attitude to have. Thanks for sharing this, in any case.
Petrichorus
Just want to say, as someone who's read (or listened to) the majority of your published stuff (I think; you seem to have a lot squirreled away): you rock. I really admire how careful you are to ensure cultures are *always* presented as more than a planet of hats, gently skewering the FSF tendency to flatten cultures so the hasty reader can grasp them; moreover, your characters always feel like people to me rather than archetypes, which is surprisingly rare among FSF writers/creators, and, along with your effortful worldbuilding, leads to a canon that feels real and believable. I'm aware that I'm just one person, and that this will probably do very little to assuage your problems with living in the creative industry, but I hope it helps a little to hear me say that I am extremely eager to see what will come next from you, and that I can't wait to engage with it. <3
Desertopa
I've definitely enjoyed Depthless Hunger, but I've enjoyed all your work, and I've worried for some time how much the work is coming at the cost of your own happiness. If you ever decide writing it is more of a burden than it's worth, I'm sure I'll be even happier to consume some other project you enjoy making more. While you're one of the top people I'd bet on to be able to succeed in traditional publishing with a concerted effort, I'm not sure it's a high-odds bet for anyone these days, and I wouldn't stake too much on it in your place. I think that games, and likely non-explicit games, are likely to impose a less perverse filter on your audience than progression fantasy. It's hard to build an attention-grabbing game as a one-person show, but I have a huge amount of respect for your skill as a designer, not only as a writer. As much as I love TLS, and have always been eager to recommend it, I think you have strong prospects of creating other games which are more broadly successful, and hopefully wouldn't steer you towards an audience you find too frustrating to deal with.
Grim8P
I'm not sure I have anything overly meaningful to say, but I did want to say that I always appreciate these bigger posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. =)
Drakenclaw
Oh, Depthless Hunger is from you. I didn't really know. Haven't kept track of things. The start was definitely quite strong, but lately I have felt my interest dropping a bit, though I can't really pinpoint it to a specific reason. I still have it favorited. Best of luck with your sci-fi story and in general.
