An Author's Struggle - What Lies Ahead

Ch 7 - The Grind

He was miserable. 

Despite the sacrifices made in the past few months, little had improved in his outreach. 

If one thing did change, it was that he stopped refreshing. After a few weeks, he had simply given up on the idea of a miracle, and gloomily avoided analytics entirely.

Without his passion driving him, he gradually lost motivation, even though he met up with his quota.

Waking up at 6 in the morning, sometimes earlier, he would be a mindless drone throughout the day. When he came back in the evening, he was too exhausted to keep up with ‘the grind’.

As his acclaimed peers advised him, he had to strive to post daily, at least a few thousand words. It would be the only way to make it to the top. 

“Two chapters a day is the minimum if you want to earn,” he remembered seeing at some point. 

That’s where the seeds of misery sprouted from.

Whereas previously he would spend his days daydreaming and skip home with excitement, unable to wait until he could pen his next few words — now he treated writing like a job.

There was no rest time for great ideas to fester, for dreams to blossom. He didn’t even have time to check up on his favorite writers, and that’s when it hit him.

‘Should I just quit my job?’

If time was the sole impediment, and if truly believed he could make it in this space, then maybe… just maybe…

Morpheus#1909: Hey, how can you guys keep up with the monetization standards? Two thousand plus words each day seems overkill.

Naide#6943: If you want to treat this like a hobby, you’ll never make it on this site. Without 2 daily chapters, you can’t ever be competitive.

That settled it.

It was no motivational speech, but it cleared out the final doubts he had about his undertaking. That same night, he announced he would stop working, and burrowed deeper into the hole.

What he hadn’t yet realized at the time, was that very few could actually make it on a site, no matter how big. Through his ‘consistency’ policy, however, QiE-Novel secured themselves an endless stream of writers wholly dependent on them.

Without a second revenue stream, Morpheus had to churn out daily chapters until the end of time, or they would stop promoting his work. It would simply drown in the competition.

Another mistake on his part was that he failed to recognize competitors for what they were. He didn’t for one second doubt any of the advice issued, as long as it seemed like it came from a credible person.

He lapped up their words as if heavenly wisdom, never questioning it. They said it was the norm, so he conditioned himself to accept it.

In retrospect, no matter how he looked at it, it was a very questionable practice. 

Set a lure with monthly prizes, but make the requirements so harsh they’re impossible to be met unless he consigned himself to a life of dependency. They give you the audience, the workspace and the sustenance — and he owned nothing.

Beholden to their every whim and terms, he could never disobey. To refuse to comply, was to lose everything. 

Of course, he was clueless of what to expect at the time. If QiE-Novel was good at one thing, it was  public relations. They made sure none of their signed authors could speak out against them, ever.

- —    ✎    — -

“Aaaand… posted!” 

Staring at the clock advertising the coming of a new day, Murphy stretched to dispel the exhaustion built up in his bones. 

He didn’t even bother to edit the last chapter, and just cast it out into the void. 

It was his 200th chapter, but he didn’t celebrate. 

For one, he was too embarrassed to actually share his new works with his friends, or what little remained of them. 

His social life took an even worse hit after he sunk into the monotone rigors of writing to compete. Though, he couldn’t care less at the time. After all, he was grinding for the top!

Secondly, he couldn’t afford to celebrate. There was no break, only a new day and a new month. A new cycle of slavery began, even as his savings dwindled. 

In the following morning, he tended to his daily comments and reviews. In his cynicism, he didn’t even notice this also felt like a job as of late. It was merely routine, a task to boost retention.

Slapping a customary thank you and a smiley on every comment, he paused in his tracks when he encountered a negative review.

“This novel started great, but quality really fell to the rock bottom after chapter 75; 1 star.”

‘Pff. Then why are you still here, idiot? Didn’t you still stick around for another 50 of them?’

Scornful, Murphy paid no heed to the fact that comments like these popped more and more frequently as of late. 

He was merely playing the tune they requested, and thought it was beyond silly for them to critique him. They all requested more, constantly chirping for quicker updates. 

This was the unavoidable byproduct of speedy releases. Every once in a while, a chapter would suck. They just had to learn how to deal with it.

Even as he cursed out the man in his thoughts, oblivious to the increasing disconnect between reader and writer, he still had to play nice for the public.

“Thank you for your feedback. I try my best, but I’m merely human and we all make mistakes,” is what he actually wrote. 

He even added a sorrowful emoji for extra effect, then put the whole feedback to the back of his mind. There was no way he could actually make an improvement, unless he hired an editor.

That in itself was an impossible ask, since no one would work with rates as low as he could afford. In the end, it takes a special breed of human to be an author in the web market.

One either had to be dedicated fully to their craft and overflow with enthusiasm and money, or one had to be a corpo-slave.