SuperNova Afterglow: End Of Days

What Value To WDC (gets real)

When I begin to think how easy it is to drop 500 to a thousand words on a review, I think about the novel. But then I examine why I don't just plow into it again. What's stopping me isn't necessarily that I couldn't knock out 50k words in two weeks. I think writing fiction is like trying to bullshit a bullshitter...at least in the context of a writing community.

Listening to people discuss their slants on preferred fiction, it's wide-ranging. Not necessarily main stream stuff that they're talking about, and I'm lost. I don't care for derivative styles, not what draws me in to specific genres. Maybe, I'm too vanilla thinking in the context of reality, and what I could draw from...experience. Then, I think, I've been here 14 years. I don't have a crew, an audience, unless it's about poetry. Even then, how seriously am I really taking it?

I thought, after one zoom session, there are some real people. While I agree with a lot of things they say and can jump in and talk about many subjects that inspire thought, I can't visualize myself speaking very much. The one time I went in a particular direction, I started to talk too fast, felt I could hyperventilate. I remember looking inward, my eyes not focused on the images facing me on the screen. Yeah, it was my first time, and with mostly strangers looking on. I felt afterwards that I was not true to myself, that I was false. I might not have seem like it to them.

So, I stare at the screen. I look on at the massive numbers of words I've created in this community. Would anyone disagree I've written enough for 10 books or more? Why wouldn't I devote all of that effort to myself? It feels I'm being untrue to myself, because I'm trying to serve something outside of me. This website designed a system where some writers are elite of others. My value as a writer here, devalued by that system. I realize that everything I do for this community is not really for myself in the long run.

How am I benefiting from this association? How am I going to tackle that novel if I go on thinking I have not found a group I fit in? Why, why haven't I found like-minded people? Was I so hurt before I came here that I pushed everyone away so they couldn't see how false I felt? Or, could it be that this website has not facilitated my needs in a way that I expected it would or should?

Lots of good questions. No easy answers. I could stop reviewing. I could stop writing poetry. I could end this dance through newsfeed like it is going to humanize me and draw people nearer. It's just some likes, quips and on to the next. I share my face. I see avatars in return. I see real people in zoom and wondered, why public here? Am I the false one? Because, I could really share. But, would that be going too far. Yes, I would like to share my life in Green Bay with the rest of you. Baby steps, I thought. But, I am a baby and that is why I feel like pushing away again.

Whatever is that I have done to make this community so dismissive of me, I need to be educated. I always took any indifference or shunning as proof my provocative statements to draw people out are enough to show my true value to them. I could offer more of myself, and have. But, I won't commit. Not if it's going to continue like this. I know that if I devote all my time to myself and nothing else, it will be the same result.

No one is going to take the time to read my blog, plow through all of this to get to the end. I might as well keep typing, for myself. I have dived into the other blogs and postings of people who seem to need attention over those who get more than their fair share, and it yields nothing for me still. Yet, people in this community seem to know one another, get involved with one another. It might be all tied to the cryptocurrency that is the unit that drives this machine. do I give in to it? Do I want to know the only reason people befriend me is because I drop a couple hundred dollars a year to pathetically draw their ears? Is that friendship?

I've been through all of this and more in my life outside the internet. When I arrived in 2006, I didn't know what I was setting myself up for. I knew I could write novel length stuff. I did not want to self-publish. Do I plow forward knowing that is my only outcome with this craft? Posting on this website is self-publishing and is earning me as much respect and money as I could expect to receive anywhere. Shouldn't I be satisfied with that?

One problem, I stumbled into this place and knocked over a bunch of stuff before I got a handle on things. And there's this matter of listening to all these sorts go on about how their this or that. To listen to these associations that they form for being this or that. Well, I don't need a blue ribbon or someone paying homage to my case color. But, that is the hurdle that stands in the way. That is the thing that forces folks who don't know the difference from my book cover what worth I could be, or have been, in this writing community. If you have peered inside and it remains this way, then I will only have to assume my value here. And, it apparently isn't from reviewing.

While I am rewarded handsomely with the crypto-credit, 20 of my last 100 reviews earned a response from the author. I know an in-depth should do better than that. So, here I am spinning my wheels in my blog. I don't need pity. I don't need fake relationships. I don't know what I need at this point. I do know, I will continue to write and sour and it will be what it is as the days pass. I have tired of the false relationships. I can tell where I stand with people who greet me with words that feel we are six feet apart. Don't need the platitudes, though I'll hear them to continue to know where I stand with each.

I know I won't kiss the ground to earn favor. I know I won't go out of my way to strike out of some sort of animosity. I'm owed nothing, even if I feel I have overpaid with something more valuable than money...to me. And that has been my words. More specifically, content.

I see what is linked in the margins. Some of the most god-awful stuff. For a website that should want to put its best foot forward, you draw in an odd assortment. Imagine the competition among good writers and the levels that this place could go. I have to read material outside of this website for inspiration, often. I find it hard with the flawed rating system to ferret out works worthy of review. Then, I find a few authors I like and the people they like and I read and review and hope to associate. But, there is a color barrier, it seems.

It's unfortunate that when I get to the bottom of this blog post, it's like getting to the bottom of my last cup of coffee and still uninspired. Still wishing I had that special slice of something to go with that Joe that didn't sate. The days are far and few between with this caffeine addiction that leaves me always trying and always coming up empty.


9.14.20

so sad that I get to the end of this and the only thing playing on a loop inside my head are the lyrics from the song, 'no I won't give up...' slowly and sadly churning over and over melodramatically or bittersweetly. ly-something.

Grammar check later. (I had to resist writing all kinds of introductions to this piece, post mortem) DOA

The problem with the systematic way members are put on disproportionate levels leads to less interaction and not more. You have put worlds within worlds with walls that only incentivizes the best activity from the privileged elite which is actually becomes less beneficial than those with the drive corrupted by the perceived division. We're basically all equals...but we're given information otherwise here.

This relationship is f'd up...not just on my end.