Limelight Inbox

[makedown]

[email | nyoom meetings | neighbors | fan comments on her novels | chance encounters | text or calls if you're one of the few people who have her number]

Comments

[thefaultinthestars]

Is it a proper doxing if they haven't gotten your home address, yet? I guess it hasn't been long.

If people realize you live next to me, the conspiracy nuts are really going to lose it.

[makedown]

The conspiracy nuts you feed for a living?

I pay our rent a year in advance, in cash. The contract has been under Aya's name from the start. I always give a fake address and use a VPN. The only way to find this place would be to go through security cameras. Or to have seen me around, like at the convenience store. That could happen.

It doesn't matter. I'm moving out tomorrow.

[thefaultinthestars]

Yes, those guys.

[sips his whiskey]

And that really is a lot of effort. Is it worth it?

[makedown]

Yes.

[sip]

I didn't think they'd bring EmpEnt into it, though. Managing WORLDMAKER? Don't make me laugh. EmpEnt managers barely know their own names. My family could handle that on their own, in their sleep, with zero scandals attached.

[thefaultinthestars]

EmpEnt should burn down anyway, but it's just a bunch of terminally online brats who don't believe in coincidence.

[amused, his tail flicks idly at the ground]

So this is why your dream is to be able to write without thinking about market appeal at all.

[makedown]

Markets, algorithms, and everything that has to do with the psychology of money are endless voids that make everything about themselves. The only way to play that game is not to care about what you throw in there.

[thefaultinthestars]

Is it the money, or the manipulation? You could release your work for free but still try to market it, right?

[makedown]

I don't mind earning money. I need money to live, and that takes up time of my life I can't spend doing what I want. That's the problem. But doing things right in the sense of making a living writing what I want would mean writing to market. Making things that fit in the neat little boxes that can reach an audience easily. The neverending cycle of labels exist to make things marketable, people adopt the label as part of their identity, creators have to make things that fit that label to reach people, and now everything is reduced to whatever fits that label the most generically because the point of things is for them to be marketable, not to express yourself. They're a product first.

So it's both. Money and manipulation go together. You have to cheat a little to get eyes on things that aren't written to market. Riding memes, and things like that.

[she's almost finished her glass btw]

And that also has a price. As you can see.

[thefaultinthestars]

I understand marketing for money, you don't need to convince me of the importance of that.

[he is not he's only had his one little sip]

But my question is, is that the only reason it matters? If you had enough money, and wrote whatever you wanted, but hardly anyone read it, would you be satisfied? Is a hundred readers as good as a million? You can also market to get more people to read it, just because you want to know it's being read.

[makedown]

I'm not immortal, Booker. So I need to ask myself what I want to do with the time I do have. And very often, that question is, do I want to write what comes next, do I want more people to discover the stories I've written, or do I want to make money to eat?

Readers are welcome, obviously. I like to talk about the things I enjoy and see what they have to say. But if I had to choose, I'm the reader I care about. And I get to read what I write the moment I write it. I like the writing aspect of writing, the part where I sit down and magic happens.

[thefaultinthestars]

That's a perfectly fine answer, did you think I was going to judge you?

There's no reason you can't write just for yourself.

Except for money, of course.

[makedown]

It's not a perfectly fine answer. I do want everything. The money, the readers, and writing what I want. But your questions are hurtful.

[thefaultinthestars]

What's hurtful about it?

[makedown]

What's hurtful is that I live in the real world, not in your hypothetical situation. And in the real world we need to compromise.

[thefaultinthestars]

[drinks]

What happened to being happy with your life?

[makedown]

I'm happy, comparatively. You're asking about happy, ideally.

That my ideal is impossible shouldn't be news. I'd already told you.

[thefaultinthestars]

It should still be possible to get closer to the ideal.

Also, you could be immortal.

[makedown]

Are you trying to turn the wheels of plot now? Or are we talking vampires?

[thefaultinthestars]

I was against the plot because you were happy, but actually you're telling me you've just compromised to things being acceptable. Certain impossible things are possible if you're the main character.

[makedown]

For the record, beheadings and body parts moving on their own when they're severed doesn't sound better than acceptable to me either.

[thefaultinthestars]

Who told you about beheadings?

[makedown]

Someone who wasn't wedded or bedded.

[thefaultinthestars]

...oh, yeah.

[makedown]

[goodbye drink you were great]

"Oh yeah" doesn't sound too good.

[thefaultinthestars]

There was a performance like that. Was the person on Acidia?