Posting on Nifty? Oui or Non?

[JamesSavik]

There's a big difference in the spank-stories on Nifty and the stories that you will read here or at Awesomedude.

 

Sex is a part of the plot, not the entirety of the plot- if there is any sex at all.

 

I just finished a story in which there was no sex at all (with the exception of unstated sexual tension) and it was nominated for Best Non-GA Story.

 

Sex for its own sake is just plain boring. I'm more interested in what is happening past the bedroom.

[Skylights]

Just as a note:

 

Remember me, I started this thread? . I wanted more readership and feedback right? And that was part of the reason I wanted to post to nifty. So I send in my story and it's been two chapters later and guess what? Not a SINGLE email from anyone who read the story on Nifty. We'll see how it goes in the future. I HAVE been getting more members on my yahoo group but even then...

 

Why am I posting there again? Oh yeah.

[Adam Phillips]

Oops. Meant to "Edit" and instead "replied."

[Adam Phillips]

Sex for its own sake is just plain boring.

 

I'd like respectfully to disagree. I read widely in all kinds of genres, fiction and nonfiction, and while not everything I pick up has sexual content, I can't say that I find sex for its own sake, or even sexual narrative for its own sake, "just plain boring." I think this is one of those "I like broccoli/I hate broccoli" things.

 

 

I'm more interested in what is happening past the bedroom.

 

Oh, I'm definitely interested in what's happening past the bedroom. Or in front of the bedroom. Or before and after the bedroom. A steady and exclusive stream of bedroom scene after bedroom scene would get boring. But effective writers of erotica can still find ways to call the libido and the imagination to attention, sometimes explicitly, sometimes tantalizingly indirectly; sometimes within the context of a larger story, sometimes stand-alone just to rev your engine.

 

Mainly I wanna see a writer do what his/her muse is tapping him/her on the shoulder to do, and I want to see it done well, whatever it is. Fortunately, we see a fair bit of that here at GA, and occasionally you'll bump into it at Nifty as well.

[Adam Phillips]

Just as a note:

 

Remember me, I started this thread? . I wanted more readership and feedback right? And that was part of the reason I wanted to post to nifty. So I send in my story and it's been two chapters later and guess what? Not a SINGLE email from anyone who read the story on Nifty.

 

You never can tell. I think a lot of readers do come to Nifty just to find something that...uhhh...relieves a little sexual tension for them. Nothin' wrong with that, but once they see a story--something intended to stay with them past that orgasm they're seeking -- that's not exactly what they're in need of at the moment, so they pass it by in favor of something that meets the needs of the moment.

 

 

That being said, nothing I've ever posted at Nifty was only about that. I've always had some story happening. And eventually, somebody has always found it and gotten back to me. A lot of somebodies, actually. I have no idea how to account for what gets feedback and what doesn't. It's one of life's odd mysteries. Like the appendix and the inexplicable appeal of MacDonald's.

[Y_B]

I think this is one of those "I like broccoli/I hate broccoli" things.

 

I like broccoli.

Chicken and broccoli casserole...mmmm

 

 

 

[Skylights]

You never can tell. I think a lot of readers do come to Nifty just to find something that...uhhh...relieves a little sexual tension for them. Nothin' wrong with that, but once they see a story--something intended to stay with them past that orgasm they're seeking -- that's not exactly what they're in need of at the moment, so they pass it by in favor of something that meets the needs of the moment.

 

 

That being said, nothing I've ever posted at Nifty was only about that. I've always had some story happening. And eventually, somebody has always found it and gotten back to me. A lot of somebodies, actually. I have no idea how to account for what gets feedback and what doesn't. It's one of life's odd mysteries. Like the appendix and the inexplicable appeal of MacDonald's.

 

Yes, I think a lot of readers do go to nifty for sexual relief, hah. It's fairly obvious. They didn't used to have all those ads.

 

As for feedback, I was overwhelmed with the amount I got for my last story on there, but perhaps it's because i'm not posting in the ever popular "highschool" section anymore. And perhaps my story is worse than I thought it was *thinks about it for a second*. Maybe it really is time to put nifty to the side lol. But I don't wantto leave my story unfinished on there.. I might try to retract it just to see what nifty will do. HAHA.

 

The archivist seems to be having some issues. He sent me a reply that wasn't the normal..'I have added this part to your story', Instead it was typed all funny. "i ahve dded his prat to your story." Anyway........

 

I like broccoli.

Chicken and broccoli casserole...mmmm

 

 

 

 

Brocolli=yum.

[JamesSavik]

I'd like respectfully to disagree. I read widely in all kinds of genre, fiction and nonfiction, and while not everything I pick up has sexual content, I can't say that I find sex for its own sake, or even sexual narrative for its own sake, "just plain boring." I think this is one of those "I like broccoli/I hate broccoli" things.

 

That why there are horse races.

 

I'm not interested in writing/reading pure sex. Some people are but... I think after reading a few thousand of them your interests might shift.

[Linxe Termoil]

Interesting conversation.

 

I myself have recently considered posting on Nifty, but, I'd have to write a story I don't give a crap about first, I think. I say that because I'm not going to argue with the Nifty Gatekeepers over who has the rights to the story, especially when their TOS pretty much states that any rights I had as the author are null and void because they're a) lazy and holding me up for money in order to get anything done.

 

That said, I can say that Nifty wasn't always that way. I wrote stories back in the late 90's as a teenage lad of about 16/17, (no I won't ever tell anyone the titles), and I had a very good relationship with one of the archivists for one of the mirror sites. I believe his name was Dave and he lived in NY (or I'm thinking about Dabeagle), and the archivists actually gave a crap back then. I'm not so sure they do now, but then, I haven't emailed them recently or submitted anything.

 

That being said, I also have to agree with Vic. 90% of the material on Nifty is utter crap. It's like opening a bunch of clam shells just to find that rare pearl. Talk about boring and tedious, but nifty is what ultimately brought me here, along with "The Other side of Me" by Dom Luka. So yes, it has its uses, mainly, if you post a story, tell the readers in your disclaimer where they can find more of your stories: Here. You can do that by providing a link to the site within said Disclaimer.

[gabrielsknife]

I feel rather ignorant, as I've never heard of Nifty before. I'm fairly familiar with places like Fiction Press and Fanfiction.net, but I've never posted anything in either place. When I felt comfortable enough to post my stuff, I did it in the fairly safe seclusion of Live Journal. Yes, there are a whole lot more "blogs" and "teen drama journals" on LJ, but it's also a pretty great place to get direct responses on the pieces I release. Now, the word-limit on posts suck, but that's nothing new.

 

But, as I glean the responses of other posters, who've experience with this beast called Nifty, I feel the need to say something. One of the oldest saying I've every had the joy to hear is "lay down with dogs and wake up with fleas." Now, I'm not bashing Nifty, but I'm just saying that you wanna watch were you're putting your fiction-babies to sleep.

 

If you don't find the right venue for your works, then people could pass them by or (worst of all) dismiss them all together. You want people to read your works? Find the audience that fits the work. And, if people want to comment, then they'll comment. It's not about the reviews or the replies, it's the fact that people are taking time out of their day to read the work you produce.

 

And, besides, there's nothing wrong with cross-posting a good story on different sites. You get the benefit of a wider audience if you've posted to sites A, B, and C instead of locking your works on site A alone. Not everyone frequents Nifty or Fiction Press or what have you .

[Krista]

I've started posting on Nifty again. So I was convinced really. And, if you're not at all looking to publish any gay fiction that you're currently writing, but want readers to sit down and read you.. you have nothing to lose. Its the ones that will publish - eventually, that probably need to stick with GA.

 

And I think if you're certainly going to try and publish a story you're currently working on, I wouldn't post it anywhere. Gay fiction isn't going to be picked up by mainstream publishers anyway (Unless its just that damn good). They're going to be looking for best sellers and there's not really a market out there big enough to support gay fiction (in their eyes), so a publisher probably will decline you IF you've posted on the web. The whole why should we pay for something that we can get for free, concept.

[methodwriter85]

Speaking of good porn...chapter 21 of Cross-Currents. Andy bottoming for the first time with a straight boy. Never fails with me- the line about Andy lifting his legs to give his teammate access makes my toes curl.

[Adam Phillips]

Speaking of good porn...chapter 21 of Cross-Currents. Andy bottoming for the first time with a straight boy. Never fails with me- the line about Andy lifting his legs to give his teammate access makes my toes curl.

 

Thanks, Jeremy...but all in good time. Don't encourage people to be seeking the story out at those sites where they can find more chapters! I'm sprucing up the story just a little in terms of the writing, and so the New Improved Version is going to be right here well before it shows up at them other places.

 

Meanwhile, Chapter 3 New Improved Crosscurrents, Now With Color Brighteners, will be posted on Friday.

 

And...uhh...sorry to have hijacked the theme. I'll shut up now.

[John Doe]

Hmm it seems someone just doesn't like to see what I have to say. Hehe. Even though it's just a different way of saying some of the same things.

 

I'd like respectfully to disagree. I read widely in all kinds of genres, fiction and nonfiction, and while not everything I pick up has sexual content, I can't say that I find sex for its own sake, or even sexual narrative for its own sake, "just plain boring." I think this is one of those "I like broccoli/I hate broccoli" things.

 

Oh, I'm definitely interested in what's happening past the bedroom. Or in front of the bedroom. Or before and after the bedroom. A steady and exclusive stream of bedroom scene after bedroom scene would get boring. But effective writers of erotica can still find ways to call the libido and the imagination to attention, sometimes explicitly, sometimes tantalizingly indirectly; sometimes within the context of a larger story, sometimes stand-alone just to rev your engine.

 

Mainly I wanna see a writer do what his/her muse is tapping him/her on the shoulder to do, and I want to see it done well, whatever it is. Fortunately, we see a fair bit of that here at GA, and occasionally you'll bump into it at Nifty as well.

 

I understand what you are saying here and I respect that, but I lean towards the viewpoint of literary work. Hence I believe there are more meaningful things out there to write about than getting in someone's pants (or the process of or the process of maintaining that relationship). There's a reason why romance and erotic novels are not considered literary. Are they not worth your time then? As Adam stated... love it or hate it. There is also a reason why those kinds of books get publish. I have said it once already (and got a minus rating as I don't know why) but Nifty has a targeted audience as do GA here (much like everything that exists out there in the world). Just know where you are posting your story and don't expect too much when your story is not geared for that audience. You'll get feedback that may or may not be useful to you. I will reuse my analogy... a historical fiction writer may not get the best feedback from a fantasy writer. Two different worlds.

 

 

I've started posting on Nifty again. So I was convinced really. And, if you're not at all looking to publish any gay fiction that you're currently writing, but want readers to sit down and read you.. you have nothing to lose. Its the ones that will publish - eventually, that probably need to stick with GA.

 

And I think if you're certainly going to try and publish a story you're currently working on, I wouldn't post it anywhere. Gay fiction isn't going to be picked up by mainstream publishers anyway (Unless its just that damn good). They're going to be looking for best sellers and there's not really a market out there big enough to support gay fiction (in their eyes), so a publisher probably will decline you IF you've posted on the web. The whole why should we pay for something that we can get for free, concept.

 

 

Completely agree with you Krista. If you want to publish a work, to go through the whole process of getting an agent and publisher, I wouldn't post it anywhere. Work on it and have close, visible, friends (someone you actually know in person... look what happened to Stephanie Meyers.... someone leaked her "new" book (from Edward's perspective... which by the way I think is a lazy way of writing some thing new and I feel is more fueled by the green bills than creativity... whether it's from the author or publisher who knows)) to edit it. Gay folks have always been on the back burner and will continue to do so (our time will come dammit!). I only heard of a few published gay works that is decently doing well. One being Geography Club (cannot remember the author) but the author is represented by a good agent and good publishing house. His book has been bought to be turned into a muscial or play, I cannot remember which.

 

Free concept... I would have to agree. In my research, (as I have been doing agent/publishing research for about two years now... since I am working on a novel for mainstream audiences and would like to be published) I have found that the research seems to back that claim though it does happen. Very rarely. So bottom line...

 

Know your audience. Know your host's (whether it be classroom, website, newsletter, magazine,etc.) intended audience. And most importantly, yourself, meaning you have to fully understand your work. This is something most beginnger and intermediate authors are still missing or trying to figure out. I have written stories halfway through only to realize the story is no longer about what I intended it to be. Sometimes that's a good thing and other times it's a WTF, what the hell did I write thing. If you know your story you can filter your feedback.

 

and...

 

Regardless of what anyone tells you or say... continue to write and read... if writing is what you want to do. That's the only way to get better at it. Though some people may disagree with me here. (i.e. one of my professors, who happens to have a book coming out soon and the media is picking his book up for other reasons... he thinks a person has the skills to write or don't... that there are some who show potential and then could never surpass that potential and that you have to have a decent grip on wiritng naturally to be good.... oh just replaying that conversation in my head kinda annoys me).

[Duncan Ryder]

I post on Nifty. I will continue to post on Nifty. Why? Because I feel a tremendous loyalty to my Nifty readers, who have been kind and generous and supportive of my writing, and many of whom have followed me here.

 

(And I should mention that I'm only here...and on another website where I"m also hosted...because people from these two sites read me on Nifty and invited me. I'd never heard of either site before.)

 

Nifty is the biggest site, and it's the first site many people find when they are looking for gay writing. I know this...because that's how I found Nifty. When I started writing Everybody's Wounded, I knew that I wanted it to be read. I had no idea what to do with it so I did a web search and found Nifty. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response I got...I started getting emails within an hour of posting the first chapter. The support, the encouragement, and the outpourings from people who read me on Nifty was incredibly touching and humbling.

 

As for proximity to some of the material on Nifty...the company you keep.... well... we all know that Nifty's full of .... less than high quality material. But the gems are there if you look for them, and a lot of people do look for them. I don't think anyone who has read my stories would say I write anything remotely pornographic, but I hear from a lot of people who read me first on Nifty. Even now, three years after I started this journey, I hear from 10 to 20 new Nifty readers every time I post a chapter.

 

I can only speak personally but I will say that my Nifty readership is thoughtful and kind and really really really supportive. People often tell me that they aren't comfortable posting to discussion threads etc. Maybe its because I tend to write very intimate stories...I don't know.

 

What I do know is... while I continue to refer everyone who emails me to GA (and while my GA webpage is always way ahead of what is posted on Nifty) I will continue to post to Nifty for the simple reason that I respect my Nifty readers.

[Adam Phillips]

I post on Nifty. I will continue to post on Nifty.

 

What he said.

[Myr]

If you post on Nifty, please take the time to finish posting the story there. It is very irritating to the Nifty Archivist to have a few chapters of a story with the last posted chapter say "see me over at Gay Authors". That hurts our reputation.

 

I, again, encourage people to post to Nifty. We recruit from there. That's where all the early Hosted authors came from.

[Graeme]

Nifty serves a very useful purpose, and I would hate for it to disappear or die. As several people have indicated, they found GA and other sites through Nifty. I'm no different.

 

My very closeted self found nifty and I'd read late at night. I found a few great stories that I absolutely loved. When I \went searching to see if I could find other stories by the same authors, I stumbled across other stories sites. In my case it was CRVBoy first, I then followed the links from there to other sites and eventually ended up here Along the way, I found encouragement to start writing and to accept my sexuality. The rest is history.

 

None of that would have happened without Nifty. If it wasn't for Nifty, I'd probably still be a deeply closeted gay guy who was growing steadily more miserable with my life.

[David McLeod]

...CAN you actually sexually molest yourself? I thought masturbation was healthy...

...

 

When I was growing up, I thought that if you didn't do it, you'd go blind.

[Gaytron87]

Ask yourself. "Does it really matter?" and if it does matter that you don't use nifty then don't but if you can't find any good reason to not use nifty.... Then continue by all means.

[Demetz]

The problem I have with nifty is not that there is quite a lot of smut, but rather that most of it is written by authors that seem a cross between brain damaged monkeys and the worst porn director ever. There is absolutely no quality control. You're just as likely to find a story about someone with a fetish for a toe up the ass as you are anything resembling real human interaction. They can also be pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to classifying the stories by genre... I recall perusing the gay sci-fi section and finding to my disgust a story that had nothing to do with science fiction and instead was about a guy who gets raped by wolves, not werewolves, just plain wolves. Accordingly, I can't bring myself to post anything on nifty that I feel really attached to. Still, weighing this against the wide readership is there some kind of medium to be worked out?

 

Yes. Treat nifty like the smuthouse it is. Write high quality smut and post it there, with a crosslink back here to the rest of your stories that may or may not involve as much erotic content. That way you can improve the quality of the nifty smuthouse while still attracting readers here who are looking for the higher quality stories.

[Adam Phillips]

You're just as likely to find a story about someone with a fetish for a toe up the ass as you are anything resembling real human interaction.

 

Yeah, but this assumes that stories about someone with a fetish for a toe up the ass are by their very nature lo-quality. I maintain that in the right hands, any premise can be made into a story that's well-written and compelling. Perverse, maybe, but compelling.

 

Yeah, there's lots of bad writing at Nifty. But there's also hi-quality non-smut that shows up like a needle in a haystack over there. Not many people have the patience to sift through it all to find that. And to be honest, I myself don't anymore. But that's not to say that I won't ever again. Sometimes it's fun to find the hidden gems. The fact that they're surrounded by so much garbage makes the finding all the more satisfying an experience.

[Duncan Ryder]

 

Yeah, there's lots of bad writing at Nifty. But there's also hi-quality non-smut that shows up like a needle in a haystack over there. Not many people have the patience to sift through it all to find that. And to be honest, I myself don't anymore. But that's not to say that I won't ever again. Sometimes it's fun to find the hidden gems. The fact that they're surrounded by so much garbage makes the finding all the more satisfying an experience.

 

Note, though, that you say "I myself don't anymore."

 

Don't underestimate the number of people who do have the patience. We sometimes have the tendency to assume that everyone is at the same stage we are...or should get there fast. Based on my email, I think a lot of guys looking for gay themed stories find themselves on Nifty first and they spend a lot of time looking around, and a lot of them are looking for stories that are NOT smut. I have received literally hundreds of emails from guys saying just that. I think most leave Nifty behind and move on to other things....but every day, there are people who just discover it.