(this book right here)
Early in the summer, I got the chance to work with the “Bootcamp Mentors” program on Wattpad, where experienced writers provide lots of one-on-one feedback to selected mentees.
The feedback I got from my mentor majorly boosted my confidence in my writing and storytelling skills. So of course I submitted Graveyard of Lullabies to Wattpad’s yearly Watty Awards.
Yesterday, when the Wattys shortlist was announced and my book wasn’t on it, I got kind of annoyed. No shade to the authors who did win–of course I understand that of the hundreds of stories submitted, only so many can win–but I’m annoyed because I’m now questioning not just my writing, but the ways stories are valued by other human beings.
As you may notice, Graveyard of Lullabies (as of me writing this) has 1.2k views.
Those views are a lie–every time anyone clicks on any chapter, it counts as a view.
Every time I go in and edit a typo, it counts as a view.
Every time I edit the whole book, that counts as multiple views on every chapter.
Every time someone leaves a comment, and I go reply to their comment, it counts as a view.
Every time someone replies to my comment replying to their comment, it counts as a view.
So as far as I know, only about 3-5 people have ever read to the conclusion. And I’m very grateful for those people, and for the people who click on even the first few chapters, but 1,200 views presents a vastly different appearance that frankly isn’t real.
I don’t mean to brag when I say this, but Graveyard of Lullabies is a good story. I have the feedback from an experienced author to prove it, even to my own imposter syndrome. That’s why I’ve been telling myself this story is good enough to win an award, bar all luck and fortune and obscure judging processes that might hold it back.
So when it doesn’t get that recognition…
I don’t know. It shouldn’t be about the award, you know? It should just be about “the writing” and “if you touched one person’s heart that’s good enough” and “art is as much for the artist and catharsis as for the audience, and it doesn’t matter if the wider public misunderstands it.”
But art’s inherently about communication, I think. Communicating feelings, experiences, perspectives.
So what do you do when months and years of effort only gets a handful of people to listen, people to read?
What do you do when the stories rooted in your own life and mind get no attention from platforms and publishers, in favor of what will “sell well,” or what has a “commercial hook,” or what fits into existing, popular genres?
I’m kind of sick of it.
So here’s my story about a trans woman necromancer with a lot of trauma, where the plot doesn’t pick up until chapter 7 and many people die, but I promise, chapter 41 will make you cry.
I hope you like it.
Jordyn Saelor 
I’m sorry to hear about this, Jordyn. I sincerely hope this doesn’t discourage you too much. In my opinion, you’re one of the best, most creative writers in the blogosphere, someone whose work I admire so much.
When I was in my twenties, I submitted short fiction to editors. I had such high hopes that I’d become a novelist. Well, it didn’t happen that way. I received twenty-one straight rejections…and gave up writing. For twenty years. I was unable to handle the rejection because it seemed so personal to me. It felt like part of me died back then, and in a strange way, I spent the next twenty years sort of mourning the death of my dreams. I only began writing again about twelve years ago (this time it’s all poetry). And I regret so much that I lost twenty years of my life, twenty years of possibilities and hope that I can’t get back.
I hope this experience doesn’t set you back, my friend. Please don’t let it affect your hopes, dreams, creativity and determination. You’re an amazing writer and person, Watty Award or not. Your work touches hearts and souls. I just want you to know you and your work really matter. :)
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s terrible to hear about all those rejections :( But I think it’s great that you’re writing again, you write some deep and poignant poems.
Thank you for the encouragement! I think I’ll be fine, it just takes time to process disappointment, and right I’m trying to take that over a cynical pessimistic attitude about everything. Your words are very touching, it’s always great to know when someone enjoys something:) 💗
LikeLiked by 2 people
Dear Mike,
It is so very kind and empathetic of you to write this heartfelt comment to console, advise and encourage Jordyn, our esteemed writer and poet. I wonder whether you know that Jordyn and three other poets have recently completed the 📜 Collaborative Poetry Challenge ✍🏻 featured in my latest post metaphorically entitled “📈🌆 Growing Humanity with Artificial Intelligence: A Sociotechnological Petri Dish with Latent Threats, Existential Risks and Challenging Prospects 👨👩👦👦🤖🧫☣️“. His entry is an excellent octet or octave.
Dear Jordyn,
Being an artist or writer can be frustrating and deflating. Often, talent, persistence and self-determination are not sufficient ingredients for achieving meaningful success and deserved recognition. Since self-publishing and alternative marketing began, there has been a huge expansion in the quantity of writers and the number of publications. Progress in the career of a writer can often depend on the number of books produced. Ironically, the more books produced, the more likely it is that more books will be ignored and fall on the wayside because nobody has the time to keep up let alone reading everything. Moreover, since people pick and choose what to read according to their likes, influences and inclinations, even the selection process will be biased, and often even biased by the need not to omit people who may help or promote them. In the digital world, recommendation algorithms also have their biases (which are too time consuming for me to unpack here). The prevailing culture, popular taste and social trend also determine what gets written and read. Thus, reading and writing can be too focused and dependent on established thinking and existing norms. As the number of books increase, references and recommendations flow increasingly towards the already popular or well-cited books. Lesser-known authors are unlikely to ever become highly referenced or recommended; even if they do, it is not (necessarily or invariably) through a cumulative process of quality production (from the authors or producers) and genuine appreciation (from the audience or readers), but the result of being propped up by a potent mix, convergence or confluence of marketing strategy, intellectual property and artificial intelligence. Consequently, new material is very unlikely to break into the market let alone disrupt existing work. The outcome is that exposure, progress, recognition and sales in the large established fields of literature (or science, art and music for that matter) tend to be trapped in extant canons and the status quo.
Yes, all of these matters can be depressing. Perhaps we can take comfort in realizing that there is still a long way before AI-generated written works can consistently match those of the best writers and editors without any human intervention. How or why do I know this? Because there is a very long list of things required in getting a decent manuscript ready, as can be seen in a comprehensive resource that I have made available for writers, editors, publishers, and reviewers who wish to systematically evaluate and determine the quality of a book or manuscript, whether it is written by themselves or others. It is available at
The said Manuscript Assessment Criteria provides a complete checklist for writers to evaluate and inspect their own works (either by themselves or with a group of readers or editors) before submitting their manuscripts to publishers, and also during successive edits after the previous submission(s) and before the next submission.
Please enjoy the resource to your heart’s content. You are very welcome to submit your feedback in the comment section there, should you think of something for me to include in the Manuscript Assessment Criteria, or if you have something to say about it.
I hope that you have found my Manuscript Assessment Criteria to be potentially very helpful in the conception, development and production of your oeuvres, whether they are fictions or non-fictions.
Most of my written works and also musical compositions are still unpublished. I probably already have enough materials to last me another 20 to 30 years of self-publishing, regardless of whether they will produce any monetary returns.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLiked by 2 people
Dear Mike and Jordyn,
Having been a multidisciplinary academic (now largely retired), I am always very interested in, and have been heartened by, any opportunity to enrich my knowledge (and wisdom) via the investigative lens of academic research, interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. And having been financially independent also gives me the leeway to continue the pursuit of knowledge and the continuation of my projects without having to worry about having them published for monetary rewards and/or recognitions. The same financial independence also allowed me to care for my late mother and to give her a great life during her twilight years.
I still do not have much time to publish (or to blog about) my unpublished works and scores, as I have multiple interests in my life, including making art and designing jewellery as well as gardening.
In any case, I am very concerned that a lot of folks are finding the world of publishing a great challenge. One of my best friends have stopped writing for many years, and I am still finding ways to encourage him to write again. He continues to be very cynical about what he could achieve at all, given the many professional setbacks that he had endured in the past.
I hope that both of you will eventually realize your dreams and aspirations.
Wishing both of you a productive 2024 doing or enjoying whatever that satisfies you the most!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLiked by 2 people
Unless the broken-winged bird is an ostrich who could never fly in the first place (do I know what this means in the context of this metaphor? No I do not, but it came to mind while reading your comment, haha).
Anyway, thank you for the supportive words! ❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Jordyn,
It is good to hear from you. It is better to be an ostrich who could never fly than one who tends to bury its head in the sand. ;) It is best not to entertain in any way that you are indeed an ostrich, lest such thoughts lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, given that I am SoundEagle, what flying bird are you going to be?
For your information, I am still running the 📜 Collaborative Poetry Challenge ✍🏻 in my post metaphorically entitled “📈🌆 Growing Humanity with Artificial Intelligence: A Sociotechnological Petri Dish with Latent Threats, Existential Risks and Challenging Prospects 👨👩👦👦🤖🧫☣️”. So far, six excellent poems have been accepted and featured stylishly in the said post. There are more to come soon.
In any case, yours is always going to be the first being featured there for posterity.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLike
True, it’s better not to be an ostrich with their head in the sand 😅 If I were a flying bird, I might be a puffin. Or a hummingbird. Or an elf owl. I don’t know, it’s too hard to pick…
How did you come up with SoundEagle as a name?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Jordyn,
Hi! The word “Sound” has multiple meanings. It can mean “good” or “decent”, as a being such as I have always been. I just like the word for its polysemous nature, as the following shows:
1. in good condition; not damaged, injured, or diseased.
“they returned safe and sound”
financially secure.
“she could get her business on a sound footing for the first time”
informal•British
excellent.
“He ate his lasagne with relish. ‘It’s sound, this.’”
2. based on valid reason or good judgement.
“sound advice for healthy living”
competent, reliable, or holding acceptable views.
“he’s very sound on his law”
3. (of sleep) deep and undisturbed.
“a doze that deepened into a sound sleep”
(of a person) tending to sleep deeply.
“I am a sound sleeper”
4. (of a beating) severe.
“such people should be given a sound thrashing”
Since I am also a composer of music, I also have reasons to like the same word for its other meanings:
noun: sound; noun: musical sound; plural noun: musical sounds
1. vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear.
“light travels faster than sound”
a thing that can be heard.
plural noun: sounds
“she heard the sound of voices in the hall”
the area or distance within which something can be heard.
“we were always within sound of the train whistles”
2. sound produced by continuous and regular vibrations, as opposed to noise.
3. music, speech, and sound effects when recorded and used to accompany a film, video, or broadcast.
“a sound studio”
broadcasting by radio as distinct from television.
the distinctive quality of the music of a particular composer or performer or of the sound produced by a particular instrument.
“the sound of the Beatles”
informal
popular music.
plural noun: sounds
“sounds of the Sixties”
4. an idea or impression conveyed by words.
“you’ve had a hard day, by the sound of it”
If you also happened to be an audiophile and connoisseur of fine sonic art, then you would be pleased by the availability of a fair amount of music on my blog, much of which comprises my musical compositions. These constitute only a fraction of my total musical output, as I have yet to find time to showcase the rest on my blog. Moreover, those published compositions are by no means representative of my musical oeuvres, which are very diverse. Hence, you may want to turn on your finest speakers or headphones, as some of my posts and pages will be playing music to you automatically. A good post to visit for a good sample of my music is entitled “SoundEagle in SoundCloud: Art, Music and Compositions about New Sensations, Love, Life, Country, Nature, Dreaming, Meditation and Spirituality” available at
Please enjoy! The post explains a great deal about my musical compositions there.
For the seconds part of my name “SoundEagle“, namely, “Eagle“, please wait for my next comment.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Jordyn,
I have thrice attempted to submit a comment here, and the comment seems to have disappeared. Ihe comment explains the first part of my name SoundEagle, namely, Sound. It includes a weblink for you to listen to my music in a special post. It seems that the comment might have been mistakenly identified as spam. Please kindly retrieve and approve it from your WordPress spam folder.
To access your WordPress spam folder, go to the following URL:
[insert your blog url here]/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=spam
After unspamming the comment, you will need to approve it by going to the following URL:
[insert your blog url here]/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=all
This will allow you to visit the said post to listening to my musical compositions. Please enjoy!
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLiked by 1 person
yep, they all were marked as spam. Since they appear to be the same, I’ll just unspam one of them:)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Jordyn,
Thank you for unspamming them. There have been many instances in which if or when I included a link to one of my posts (or pages) in comments that I submitted to other blogs, these comments immediately disappeared, presumably consigned as spams, and consequently these bloggers don’t even realize that I have sent them these comments. And if or when I decided to inform them, they were surprised and had to manually unspam these comments. The issue of disappearing comments can become an annoying or frustrating inconvenience to me and other bloggers, and hampers smooth conversations between bloggers, and even causes some duplicated comments because I have had to resubmit them.
If you are curious to know about the reason(s) of my choosing Eagle, then please visit my post entitled “🦅 SoundEagle Guided Imagery“, in which I present vivid and realistic animations, stories, mythologies and symbolisms about eagles, whose majestic flights can resonate with the (embodied, corporeal and/or transcendental) Imagery and Impression as well as Being and Feeling of soaring like an eagle, whether symbolically, intellectually, aesthetically or spiritually, including imagining oneself gliding above the city and tree canopies. For your convenience, the link is:
Come and see how SoundEagle flies! You may soar on SoundEagle’s wings there…..
To see the flying effect properly, you will need to view it on the large screen of a desktop or laptop computer.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Jordyn,
Hello! I sent you a message on SoundCloud about a day or two ago.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
LikeLike
Oh! I have been very busy the past few days and haven’t checked SoundCloud. Thanks for the notice
LikeLiked by 1 person