It is sometimes absolutely revolting when some of the only feedback I get for "Mayhem in a Pill" are small emails: Good Job., Keep up the good work., Can't you write faster., When are you gonna start having the MC sleeping with his sister.
And yes that last one is a real question from an email I received a few chapters back.
I rarely get truly useful feedback and as some of you know I am probably disgustingly constantly begging for feedback. Tonight, I got what was probably one of the best pieces of feedback I have ever received in anything of my writing and I spent time in college writing for the student newspaper and a few neighborhood newspapers as a summer job. I am including the feedback from actual editors whose job it was to give feedback on stories.
This email was beautifully written and several points the writer made were actually valid. I spent approximately twenty minutes creating a reply email to go over the ideas that were brought up and to inform the emailer they were correct about a few things and I was preparing to make the necessary corrections to the story.
Then I looked up and saw this person's wonderfully crafted email with its many valid points and beautiful prose was sent to me anonymously. So no return email address was given.
There went twenty minutes of my day I could have been using to work on the next chapter as I found myself with time in my day to write and even now as I am writing this blog posting, I realize I should be writing the next chapter!!!!
So I have decided to go ahead and make some of the suggested changes as the anonymous emailer has pointed out but I make them with a real "meh" attitude. I was looking forward to a possible continuing correspondence with this person who obviously shares the same literary standing as the great writers of all time. Obviously because the first thing they wrote was how much they liked my writing.
The ideas were just great and I find myself considering some serious personality changes of a fairly important character in the life of Tim Murphy.
But then I also realized they chose to use the same system to safely contact me anonymously as the asshole who wanted me to start writing about sexually assaulting a fourth grade girl.
As I said... infuriating!!!!
P.S. I find myself working twice as hard as I normally would on the next chapter because according to the download numbers, we are quickly reaching my self-styled deadline of 10,000 downloads of a particular chapter. Realistically we are already within less than a thousand of that deadline so if I want to keep my self-imposed deadline I need to do some writing. But then again... it is a self-imposed deadline.