How have your friends/family reacted to your work?
I wasn’t sure if I should tag this as a discussion or advice (and feel free to remove if this isn’t a good sub for this topic) but I was wondering about people’s experiences with their friends and families reading their work, whether finished or a WIP.
Have people close to you read your work? Did you ask them to? Did you get positive or helpful reactions? How did you handle it if your work has NSFW content?
I have completed my first novel (118k new adult contemporary fantasy) and am in the middle of writing book 2, and essentially nobody I actually know has ever read it. And I’ve asked them to.
My mother and stepmother both like fantasy and they haven’t asked to read it. My dad knows about it and is an avid reader and hasn’t read it. My best friend is an english teacher in a high school who loves fantasy and I’ve asked her to read it and she hasn’t. My best friend from elementary school literally has a character named after her and her sister, and she knows about the book and hasn’t asked to read it. My bf read an early version of my first book, but is struggling to get through reading the finished and vastly edited/changed version (he read few couple chapters over the span of a few months) and hasn’t read any of my second book (which is about halfway done).
For most of them, I asked them to read it once or twice, and have certainly mentioned it many times (when relevant), wanting to not be too pushy. I feel like at this point if I brought it up again I’d be begging them to read it, and I want them to WANT to read it, ya know?
Honestly, it’s really depressing me that nobody in my circle/family cares. Like, this book (trilogy) has been my life for the past 2-3 years now. I’m super passionate about it and I am just dying to actually talk/gossip about it with someone I know.
So, I was wondering what your experiences were with your family/friends reading your work or WIP. Any applicable advice would also be appreciated :) TIA