Why you shouldn't be mad at the author for not interacting with you.
Tomoyuki I am willing to talk to you and I don't ask you to kill yourself. So listen to me.
LostInFictions Yeah, I should be listening to you. How are you doing?
Tomoyuki Dealing with my awful stomach issues. Sobs.
Wow, I'm happy that this thread of mine has become such a healthy place of discussion. Thank you so much, everyone, for participating in the thread~~~
LostInFictions Please take care of yourself!
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Snowin It is indeed pathetic. However, before you nag at him, you should first look at it from another perspective. Picture in your mind an ambitious writer trying to make a name for himself. He would reply to every comment, review, and would communicate with his readers. One day, he received a negative comment. 'It's normal to receive a negative comment.' He thought. However, a time came where he only received negative comments. 'This isn't normal anymore... Is my book... really that bad?' He thought. As the negative comments increased, he slowly started to believe the comments to be true. It's a psychological effect that happens when the more you are exposed to something, the more you believe it to be true. Thereafter, he started to believe that his book is bad. It doesn't matter if someone complimented his book as he would almost always regard that compliment to be false, that someone only complimented him to cheer him up.
I don't know if that is what Tomoyuki really experienced, but I myself could relate to what he's been going through (In fact, what I wrote above was my own experience).
In conclusion: Repeated exposure to negative comments could lead to an author to think that his work that he tirelssly created day and night, is nothing but utter garbage.
Maybe... the reason why Tomoyuki is always ranting in the forums is because he thought that if he did, he might see someone that has a similar experience to him as well. This is a forum for writers, and he thought that he has much higher chances of meeting a kindred spirit if he ranted in it.
But hey, that's just theory. A film theory!
(Sorry for the long post.)
Katie_Torres_3147 It's great that you, as an author, are ready to communicate with readers!
I am an author, reader, reviewer. Honest reviews are written to me, thanks to them, I can improve my writing, novels become more interesting. Therefore, I welcome the honest dialogue between the author and the reader.
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Tomoyuki My friends have advised me to kill myself
You do realize that anyone advising you to kill yourself is not your friend?
I read similar comments like this from you since I'm on this forum. At first, like many others I gave you some good advices, but self-pity like yours will lead you nowhere. At this point, I think you need help, maybe a therapy if you're not trolling here.
Even if every comment/review was negative, you could still take the constructive criticism part of it and ponder over what makes them react like this. Because I have seen garbage novels here with bad grammar being popular, and everyone (if you're not retarded and since you can write on this forum, you're not) improves over time if you really put the effort.
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Arkinslize Unfortunately, I have not improved at all for over 20 years...
Also, I cannot afford therapy or psychiatric treatment. I don't have the money. And I can't ask more from my parents, I'm already too much of a financial burden on them.
Are you sure they are really your friends??? You need to be careful while choosing whom you want to be friends with. No one can ask you to do such cruel things...That's not normal!
Writers are creators... You never had to put down your pen for what others say... I believe each writer's work is different and unique... So just keep trying and you will one day look back and think, how stupid I used to be... It happened with me often... Cheers!! Never ever stop writing for what others say, they cannot understand our joy in writing... When I publish even one chapter successfully, it gives me a great excitement which I could never get from doing anything else.
Xincerely Well, it depends what the comment is. And also about your own personality. I am a complete introvert in real life, but love to write, so people would just get swarmed about why my stories are important to me, about how much their support meant to me, about my fear of disappointing them and hoping that I would always live up to their expectations. People in the fanfic world were often very gracious and replied back, reassuring me and appreciating my actually communicating with them.
"Update fast please" - "Thank you so much for your kind answer. It makes me so excited to see that people are waiting for my story to update. I am so happy. You know, I am in the middle of midterms/exams/crunch at work, so I am dying :( I wish I could be writing more. I am so looking forward about what is going to happen in the next few chapters."
"Lovely" - "Why thank you! I am always so afraid that my story will be unreadable/displeasing. I never really know how to convey my thoughts to the readership through the characters and happenings. For example, in this chapter, I had some difficulty with this, I feared this would not be realistic. Knowing that you guys are reading and supporting this work makes me so happy and boosts my moral. You guys just make me want to write more and more."
"This is garbage" (I love that Webnovel shows your replies, this is a perfect occasion to do some low-key shaming) - "I am really sorry that this story made you unhappy. You know, as an author, I really want people to enjoy my work, to just bring people a little bit of happiness in this bleak period. I wish I could have done so for you. How would you go around this or that shortcoming? What are your suggestions?" Other readers will see that reply and think you lovely and so mature (and might just go in and shame the reader for you, and your hands remain clean - Am I a bit of an hypocritical Green Tea b*tch who makes others do the dirty for her? When the need arises, yes)
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There's obviously a writing world I've yet to fully experience.
I do get the occasional heckle for updates on another site, but it's usually cute and pleasant. Or spoken with emoji language. Like that. Cute.
I guess I don't get the OP original stated issue because I've already set expectations up front. I'm a fan of the like button, and my behavior is consistent with that. So it's an expectation.
And I generally write stories not many readers want to read anyway. My readership is very chilled or not at all.
I guess, my advice here is, set expectations upfront. So readers are aware that you're the type of person not to really respond to comments, etc. Should avoid most issues of this kind. There's always gonna be one that will be pushy. Those to be handled case by case. Customer service skills can come in handy at those times. I guess.
Being honest. What hurts me as a writer is the guilt. I'm a person with a huge inferiority complex so I can hardly care about insults and negative reviews (really, even if one said my writing is garbage I would probably agree with them). But just as I mentioned before, what hurts me the most is simply guilt. I feel guilty when I'm not writing enough chapters, I feel guilty when I still see readers supporting my stories despite my lack of releases. They make me feel blessed but at the same time guilty.