Am I Anyone's Favorite Writer?

Someday, you’re going to be someone’s favorite author.

--Lucia Franco

With the posting of my drabble “The Invasion” (link below), I hit 250 stories published on Vocal. I know that it should be a time of celebration for me. After all, that’s a lot of stories! Surely, I should be proud of myself. However, I find myself reflecting on my past three years on Vocal and wondering how I could have done better and, more importantly, if I have made an impact with any of my stories.

Based on my stats, I would say that my impact has been minimal. I have 236 subscribers—which is modest, I think—but I wonder how many of them actually read and interact with my stories. After all, I do not get much money from reads on here (not that I ever planned to; that’s not why I am a part of a Vocal). If you just look at the stats for my most read stories (depicted in the image below), you will see that I have not had many reads over the past three years, even for any my top stories (“Writers on Writing: Anne Rice” being one of my first top stories).

Now, I know that this has nothing to do with my writing abilities. People have assured me that my writing is superb (not to toot my own horn). More likely, it has everything to do with the fact that I am not good at marketing my work outside of Vocal. Frankly, I am a very social reserved person, so it is hard for me to go, “Hey, check out my work!” even among friends and family. Then you have to add in the fact that I can no longer get on to my Facebook page thanks to a very frustrating set of circumstances (the fictionalization of which you can read about in a story linked below). So, I rely almost exclusively on my readers to spread the word about my work—well, that and Instagram and Threads. As you can see, that strategy has not worked out so well.

So, has my writing made an impact on anyone?

If you go strictly by the numbers—number of reads, number of hearts, number of comments—then no, not much. However, if you actually read the comments that come with my stories, few though they might be, you could say that I’m making at least a little impact on the people who do read my work.

Yes, I still get some generic comments from people just saying “nice job” or something similar. (Those comments are a bit frustrating, but at least they’re few and far between now.) For the most part, though, I get thoughtful comments, even if they are just a few words. And those comments mean the world to me. They show me that people are not only reading my stories, but they are also absorbing them, thinking about them, and digesting them enough to say something to me about them. And who knows? Maybe that means that that story will have an impact on them and how they think and/or feel long after they make that comment.

I would still like to get more reads and hearts. After 250 stories, I think that I deserve some more circulation. But that’s something that I have to work on. Marketing is another part of writing that I just have to learn more about and get accustomed to. That way, I can make a bigger impact on a broader audience.

Do I think that I am someone’s favorite writer right now? I honestly don’t know. I would like to think so, but with the slim number of readers I have, I doubt it. I won’t give up, though. I will, as Lucia Franco said, someday become someone’s favorite writer. I just need to keep at it.