First of all - thank you to everyone who replied to my last post. It helps. :)
Recently I received an email about my flash fiction piece, wherein a reader expressed appreciation for it. In addition to making me feel happy, it reminded me of something Seth Dickinson said the first time I wrote him, years ago now, about his piece "A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed)". He thanked me for writing, because no one ever engages with short fiction. I didn't know what he meant by that at the time. But now I do.
It's very hard to gauge reader reactions to stories that are published in more "traditional" venues. There normally aren't comments/likes to give feedback, and even in venues that DO provide a comment section, the vast majority of people never post any comments at all.
The artists I know feed on validation. It could be a general artistic thing, or a general human thing, or maybe I'm just stuck in a very weird social bubble. /shrug. I almost wish I'd gone into one of the performance arts... When you act, or play music, or do stand-up comedy, you have immediate feedback from the audience. That doesn't happen with the written word. Which means that those of us that feed on validation but don't perform are starving.
There is some recourse. I go to WorldCon regularly now, and as Robin Hanson noted, it's a long party to celebrate the authors we admire. But even there, interaction is a bit limited. If I had to guess, I would say this is exactly why serialized fiction has become so popular again. People actually leave feedback on serial fiction. Scott Alexander could publish Unsong as a single completed novel. But he'd never see more than the smallest fraction of the community interaction that comes from telling a story to a collective audience over time.
Fanfiction is the same, I previously quoted a friend who observed "I wrote one short little fic after I saw Thor: The Dark World and in the time since I put it online I have literally received more feedback on it than I have in total for every piece of original work I’ve ever published. It’s like pure black tar heroin for the sad little twitching addict that is a writer’s ego.”
I am also guilty of this. I've read stories that really moved me, and then never said a thing. Like, almost moved me to tears, and the author has no clue.
This is unfortunate, and I want to do my part to help change it. From now on, if a work takes my breath away, I will leave a comment on it, even if to say nothing more than that. If commenting isn't an option, I'll spend five minutes trying to find an email, website, or twitter of the author instead, and send them thanks. Reading something like that is rare, and it's not fair for someone to not know they're appreciated. In fact, I'm going to go back and do that right now, for several works I've read in the past year that I left uncommented. They deserve no less.
(That being said, this is not the thread to say good things about anything of mine that you've liked. If you agree with any of this, please find something you've loved by someone else, and comment/tell them instead! Spread it outward. :) Thanks!)