I ought to be feeling pretty confident right now, considering I finished the new draft of that old novel, and it's light years better than the original. (Though there's some slacking off, I feel, towards the end.)
But I am totally not.
I can't really describe what the problem is, exactly, but I'm suddenly filled with malaise. (Over the weekend, I ended up spontaneously crying twice. Which years ago would be a sign my period was coming, but at this point I don't have them every month anymore, plus I had just had one about two weeks earlier.) Malaise and a sense of futility.
It's like, even if I go to all the effort of getting this novel ready and out there in the form of interactive fiction, is it even going to matter?
The first chapter that's out there as a "demo" is getting a decent "click-through rate," according to itch.io's analytics, which means about 2.75% (as of the last time I looked at the analytics page) of the people who look at the game's page also go ahead and click the button to play the game. But that doesn't really mean much: they might click the button, read one or two screens of text and get bored and leave. (Or decide it sucks and leave for that reason.) That will be an even bigger concern with the full novel version, and one that I can't see any away around; I'm always going to worry that no one's reading the full thing. And probably most of the people who start it aren't going to be reading the full thing.
I've been contemplating moving a lot of my Greek mythology related works of writing onto AO3 (partially as an advertisement for the game once it's up), but would anyone actually read them or like them? Just because I like them doesn't mean anything. I like a lot of the things I've written about Velvet Goldmine characters, but my fics have some of the lowest hit and kudos counts in the fandom, so I'm obviously the only one.
*sigh*
I know I should be posting about how I need a name for the new version of the novel (there's stuff about that two posts back, or was it only last post?) and a name for the series, but I can't even bring myself to care right now. What's in a name? More importantly, what good is a name? It won't make the work it's attached to less bad. I mean, yeah, a really awful title will drive off potential readers/players, while a good one might draw a few in, but considering the work itself will drive them all off, what's that matter in the long run?
I'm afraid a lot of my problem right now is extended house-boundedness, which is obviously not a problem that's going to go away anytime soon, with more dangerous strains of COVID likely to get here in the weeks to come, and of course my obesity and asthma puts me at super-high risk of death if I get it, but my lack of a job or anyone depending on me in any way (plus my lack of a physician, my obesity and my asthma) puts me about down with homeless people in terms of priority to receive the vaccine. And I don't think my confidence is ever likely to recover from losing my job, not unless I can find a new one, which obviously isn't going to happen until well after COVID goes away.
*sigh*
Sorry. I didn't mean to be just unloading all my pointless worries. That's not interesting reading or helpful to anyone else. (It doesn't help that I have pretty much no human contact other than my brother and my parents right now.)
How is everyone else dealing with the extreme sense of being entirely and utterly housebound, now that most areas will soon have entered a full year of this?
