Conversation with an older writer

In August I posted an excerpt from something I have been working on for the past couple of years titled "Conversation with a young prostitute." It was an experiment in a couple of ways, first, generally it's not a good idea to expose work until it's finished; there are just too many pitfalls waiting for you in comments from people who have not seen the finished work or all of it.  That can be pretty discouraging.

Secondly, the writing itself is experimental, at least for me. Briefly, the full story explores a modern relationship that occurs totally online and is expressed only in instant-messaging format with the inherent spelling, grammatical and typographical errors intact.

I had hoped for a little feedback, though given the few comments ever posted on this blog I wasn't particularly optimistic.  The posting drew no comments though it was viewed almost 200 times. I suppose no response is better than negative, but a  writer can view that as almost a rejection of it all. If you draw no response either negative or positive you haven't done much to affect people one way or another. Frankly, with this particular piece I can accept that.  The posting is put out there from near the middle of the book with no background on either character or any context to their relationship.  This is because, I chose to develop their relationship and context through their online conversation rather than include an omniscient narrator writing perfect English and explaining everything. It is a difficult, complicated process and I am constantly going back and forth to develop the story for the long haul.

So long story short, I am taking no comments as just that, lack of interest and that's ok.  It is my job to make it interesting and if someone were to start at the beginning and grow with the characters and their interaction, I think it gets interesting.  One sad side effect was that one person I let see some of the early work, has never talked to me since then. So, perhaps that is a comment.  I remember a Jewish comedian years ago whose signature line was "If I offend you, tell your friends." Sorry to lose a friend, but ok with that response.

It took all of that introduction to say this. There have been several responses of a sort, though not direct. One of the trackers on the blog tells me where the ISP a page hit is located and another tells me what the search words were. Among the almost 100 views, the post has received several hits using the search words "young prostitute." Almost all of these come from eastern Asia, particularly Hong Kong, Japan and China. A few have come from eastern Europe. Few if any of them spend more than a few seconds on the page.

Somehow I suspect those people were not looking for a literary exercise.  Just sayin'.  Perhaps I should change direction and instead of exploring a complex relationship which at times deals with drug addiction, alienation, impossible love and prostitution, age and youth, and write "50 shades of internet font colors" instead.  Maybe that would be more interesting and attract even more of those one-second hits and draw them out for longer periods of time.

Conversation with a young prostitute