Make everything you make canon and everything should be fine.
I make every story connected since stories I'm afraid will turn out bad won't be a waste of time.
What is the phrase... "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"?
Applies perhaps, maybe. Tis better to have written and forgotten than never to have written at all.
Okay that didn't really make sense but my overall point is that, me personally, I say that if you feel truly passionate about something--and I mean truly passionate where you're not just rather blindly or naively creating and are actually learning, willing to take criticism and do everything you can to improve--your work will pay off. I'm not a big earner creator, not by a long shot, but "pay off" doesn't necessarily have to mean financial or by prestige.
In my opinion, the one thing that unites the best writers is that they lend their readers their passion for their work, and the most successful ones will have gotten their readers as excited if not more excited than they are. If you don't end up attaining thousands of readers or global recognition, so be it. You know what you did, because if you're truly passionate about your work, you will always be proud of it, and you'll never have a moment's regret.
Unless you're like me and you keep going back and spotting random grammatical things or whatsoever, but bah. Cost of doing business.
I was going to comment to Bee's post about writing for my own enjoyment first and not worrying (too much) about lack of audience, etc., but after reading your comment I changed my mind. 
Instead, I'm gonna say this: well said, supersuper90, couldn't have said it better. 
Just stop giving a shit. Who cares if people don't like it, or if it's bad? I mean, being open to critique that can help you improve what you're doing is good, as well as being open to other perspectives. Though in the grand scheme of things the only thing that matters is that you're enjoying it, if you're writing to please others the story will just turn out hollow and dissatisfying. If you're still worried about about readers, there's an audience for everything, someone will pick up what you're putting down regardless of quality or how niche it may be.
By no means an experienced writer here, but
Just because your work is ignored or hated doesn't mean it's wasted! The stuff you wrote, even if unremarkable in its current form, is still a good foundation from which to build bigger and better things in the future :]
What I do is kind of treat the internet as a storage facility; whatever I create, I just upload somewhere and pretend I don't care if people read it or not, you know, just so there's a copy of it somewhere in case it becomes useful at some point 
I just chuck it on my dA/Tapas/whatever and move on with my day as if it didn't happen 
Of course since it is out there, there's a chance people will find it, but it's easier to cope if you kind of lie to yourself and pretend you don't care about that XD To this day I still have various projects scattered across the internet that no-one really cares about, but looking back on it all I still feel a certain sense of accomplishment, like standing on top of pile of the corpses of my foes, even if no-one's around to witness it. Just having those marks of Having Done A Thing are a real boost to my confidence, and conversely I find a lot of really talented people with self-doubt have deleted their old works and thus don't have that backlog of achievements to look back on (though I think the causation goes both ways; if you have self-doubt, you're also more likely to delete the works you feel doubtful about. It might be a bit of a vicious cycle o_o)
Every artist and writer I know, including some people with tens of thousands of subs, has experienced launching something they were so sure everyone would like... and then felt that sinking feeling when it's not as popular as they thought.
Honestly this is a big reason I'd advise writers and artists never to pin all their hopes on a single piece of work. Readers can be very unpredictable, and sometimes they love some silly little thing you made as a side project with minimal effort, while ignoring the most beautiful and meaningful thing you've ever made. It's frustrating! But successful creators are ones who roll with it.
Failing to achieve a goal is a learning experience. When the cost of failure is just "nobody was reading it", that's at least not the worst that can happen. Like at least you didn't get publicly ridiculed or lose a bunch of money! And "nobody's noticing it" is at least a relatively fixable problem that can often be rectified with things like:
- Make a more polished cover and banner image. (I cannot overstate how important your cover is on Tapas).
- See if you can make your blurb describe the content more punchily.
- Do some advertising, post on the forums, Tapas discord, run ads on Comicad, increase your social media presence, take part in events on Tapas or twitter hashtags.
If these things don't work, then you're onto phase two, because if having a great cover and blurb and posting around isn't getting you seen on Tapas, chances are, there's a problem with the work that may call for a reboot or focusing on a different platform or work. Most commonly:
- This story just isn't this platform or audience's jam. Best case scenario here is that it is the jam of some other platform, for example, furry comics rarely do great on Tapas, but could be killing it on places like Comicfury. Worst case scenario is you're making something that's very unfashionable and hard to make work anywhere, for example making a "two gamers on the couch" gag comic in 2022. Sometimes a concept just can't work with the current time and place you're in, so it's good to avoid pinning all your hopes on one project.
- There's nothing wrong with the concept, but the execution wasn't quite selling it. A lot of underperforming comics and novels on Tapas, with a little more experience to make the story structure a bit tighter and with a punchier opening, or with more polished art or presentation, or just some time spent improving English skills (even a native English speaker can have bad spelling and grammar that put off readers!) it could absolutely succeed.
Basically... don't give up. I actually went through a period of thinking I'd really messed up with my comic because I was gaining readers a lot slower than I thought I would, and slower than a lot of my friends (a downside to being in your thirties and having friends who are professional level creators! 
)... but now I'm over 2200 subs and on the Tapas Creator Bonus Program. That comic was salvageable by simple things like increasing my marketing presence (including teaming up with friends for cross-promo), being patient and keeping going to get to the exciting parts of the story.
If you keep focusing on providing the audience with a good time and getting yourself out there with nicely presented promotional materials, you will make it with some work on another.
This is so useful! Thank you so much. About the audience, you know if historical romance is popular here on Tapas?
It certainly seems like Fantasy Romance that's based on historical periods is popular, but I'm afraid I don't really know beyond that? Romance, especially straight romance, isn't a big area of expertise for me or something I read a lot of
write what YOU want! I won't lie, gaining readers is difficult for tapas novels so you gotta be your own biggest fan. You might as well do it by writing something you enjoy! On the bright side, tapas readers are polite when they do comment!
I had this issue with my stories all the time. My artist and I share this account and I notice the large disparity between his GL comic and my Action comic when it comes to engagement.
There were a lot of times I've considered quitting. But everytime I tried I just... couldn't? My story "Cross" doesn't do very well in a Romance dominated market but for some reason I always feel like quitting my story would just take a part out of me.
Passion is a double edged sword, it keeps us motivated to keep going but also makes us anxious about failing. No matter what your anxiety will tell you, never give in to it.
Especially after finishing up my first novel on Tapas, I know for sure I had the exact same thoughts! I don't have a big following or anything, so I also had to build my way up and interact with a lot of others here on the forum before I gained any sort of following - and novels are hard to gain an audience!
I can say for sure, if you write something that you would want to read - surely, there's someone else that would want to as well. If not, then at least, you'll always have one reader
It's definitely tricky to bypass the feelings, but the more passion you put into it - the more you'll look back and feel proud of yourself for making it that far, and the readers can definitely feel it conveyed to them as well.
8 days later
Right...first, find and watch a show called Re:Creators. It deals with a lot of this stuff, and it WILL help. You can find it on Amazon Prime and on other, less legitimate anime websites that I will not mention here. But, legitimately or not, watch it. Characters say stuff in it that I think you need to hear.
So, I am the author of Diablo:Demonsbane, the e-book that launched the entire Blizzard Entertainment fiction line back in 2000. I would have been the author of a few more fantasy novels if those pesky publishers hadn't glutted themselves on manuscripts after the Jackson Lord of the Rings films. I've written several non-fiction books, I was one of the first online video games issues columnists in the English language, I've recently collaborated with Ed Greenwood (creator of the Forgotten Realms) on The Eternity Quartet, and I own my own publishing company. I stopped counting my article publication credits after it hit number 250. So, I may not have become the next Stephen King, but almost 25 years into my career, I think I've held my own.
I finished my first novel when I was still in high school. It was called Demon's Vengeance. 65,000 words. And it was terrible.
It was so bad, in fact, that a few years after I finished it (after I'd polished my style writing Highlander and Doctor Who fanfic for a while), I actually wrote a letter of apology to the editor at Tor I had sent it to who had asked to see a copy of it when I mentioned it on a newsgroup. I felt that bad wasting the man's time with it. That's how awful it was.
(Let me put it this way - the titular Demon in the book revitalizes his life force by hypnotizing and then having sex with beautiful women, draining them into a dead husk, and the problem of gathering an army for the final battle is solved by just opening up magic portals on a giant plateau. There's a test of courage in which a burly highlander swings an axe around and stops it just before splitting somebody's head open to see if they're afraid. The writing style was full of unnecessary sentence fragments that did not connect at all to the characters or situation. It was THAT kind of bad.)
Was it a waste? Hell no. The mere act of finishing it taught me so much about the process of writing that I would call the time invaluable. And even more, I knew that I was capable of finishing a novel, which is no small thing when you consider that any long writing project is a marathon. Demon's Vengeance never got shown to the public, but a lot of what I wrote afterword did. And, within 5 years of finishing Demon's Vengeance, I was agented and signing a contract with Pocket Books for Demonsbane. I even got to receive some brief mentorship from my favourite author, Dennis L. McKiernan (whose books were literally what inspired me to pick up my pen and write).
None of us start off good - the best we get to ask for is that we start off good enough. I can tell from the style of what you've written in this post that you're already there, so there's that problem sorted. All that's next is putting your story on the page.
You are going to make mistakes. Every author does that. The way we get better is through sheer practice. I'm as good as I am now because I've been doing this for around 30 years, if you count the amateur work before my first professional sale.
But, there's something else, and I don't think somebody who doesn't have a couple of decades under their belt can tell you what I'm about to: right now, in these starting years, you are going to be writing the rawest, most vital prose of your entire career. You will take risks that will propel your stories far beyond the sum of their parts. All of it will lay the groundwork for the refined and experienced writer you will one day become many years from now, but in the process of becoming that version of you, you will lose the ability to write the stories you can right now, at this moment. You will become a better writer, but also a more conservative one. Nothing you write in the here and now is a waste...and I speak from experience.
You should post it.
There a word which said; No pain, no gain.
If you are too skeptical into how people will react or comment on your novel, then you'll be forever stuck in one place. No space for improvement as you afraid to move forward, to accept, and to hear others people opinion/feedback toward your work.
I never get angry, nor afraid when somebody come in and put a bashing comment.
Some will comment in a good manner with advice included on how you should improve, some might just drag you down along their word in their comment. Ignore it! Hear your heart and do what you want to do. Digital world was like our reality, it vast and had no boundaries in our sight. There will be people who like it, and they will be people who hate it.
Self publishing benefit was you can set your own time, your own rules, and your own creativity in creating your work. Compared to printing publishing, this is way more comfortable. So my answer to you, go for it! Step out from the boundary and polish your work by making this first step. Cheers!
Write for yourself and you will always have at least one fan. Write and post into the abyss hoping that someone will find you in a galaxy as large as the milky way; and you will always be another star hoping someone sees you before you burn out.
But there is no guarantee if you do, that someone will see your beauty before you fade.
Always remember to see your own brightness first.
️ I'm so glad you read my post.
