Pretend that the above graphic is telling you that I’m working on Mutual Benefits Chapter 18. I’m having issues with the image uploading system and my tech guy isn’t around this week.

When I first posted Panopticon, a reader gave me some helpful feedback, even if it wasn’t their intention. I remember them being angry about me posting a clearly esoteric piece on a website primarily for stroke stories, and they told me that I should “just upload to Literotica if I wanted to pretend to be an author” or something. I did that, and it was good advice. Literotica has a good community, and more importantly, their community is very passionate and particular about their wants. Within days, any upload that I give the site will have both positive and negative comments giving me helpful feedback.

Literotica and Sexstories are kind of at odds in this way. Literotica’s voting system seems fairer and more calm, and their users enjoy commenting more often. Sexstories has less restrictions and moderation on stories, and more people on a whole seem to frequent the site. Literotica enjoys a story with sexual components, whereas Sexstories seems to prefer “sexcapades” with minimal stories.

And, hilariously, in this way, whenever I post a story to both websites that pleases the community of one site, it displeases the other.

Recently I posted A Miraculous Affair to both websites. The initial response seems to be that it’s a hit on sexstories.com and a minor flop on Literotica, criticized as “silly with an unsatisfactory ending.” And, to be fair, it absolutely is. It’s a silly story, and I’m still a novice in the genre that needs to learn the ropes. I don’t really care what others say; to me, it’s a bit sloppy, and needs tightening. I’ve often said that it’s silly to declare that “I’m only writing for me,” but that said, I don’t want to give any delusions that I will only ever write what other people want. I write what I want, in a style that I hope pleases others. I’m still fairly stubborn when it comes to choosing how I feel about a story versus doing what my audience wants with a story – otherwise, given all of the opinions about Mutual Benefits, I probably would have just killed myself in frustration by now.

…My way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me.

Thomas De Quincey, one of the “inventors” of modern stream-of-consciousness writing

In this way, posting to such a set of opposites is almost freeing. It’s rare that both websites dislike a story, and if they do, it’s because it’s one of my more experimental/niche works (Breathe, And Ophelia Blinked, etc). Sexstories seems to enjoy my more silly/shallow works (Amy’s Fantasy, A Miraculous Affair) and Literotica prefers more structured, ongoing works (Mutual Benefits, of course). There are other websites I post to, but none offer such an interesting dichotomy as these two.

I like having a varied audience. Above all, if people from both of these sites say I need to work on something, I really need to work on it. It’s also a good reminder that I’m writing to tell stories and hopefully please people along the way as a secondary objective. Having some people constantly unsatisfied and others constantly satisfied actually helps me to remember this. I also love how passionate and opinionated some of my readers are. I hope this community never loses that aspect. I’ll talk to you all next week.