OK, so posted a couple of new bits of Ruth after months of delay. As it says on the end-note, I hope this is now in a position where it is finishable and certainly hope to post at more reasonable intervals in future. I even have a couple of new stories I'm working on...#
However, the point of this is that life has been a bit complicated over the past year or so and not only have I not been writing, but I haven't been checking the feedback with any regularity, either. I hope to trawl through them all and reply in the next few days or weeks BUT this is just to say sorry if you have actually bothered to comment and I didn't respond. Or - worse - did respond and then broke off the conversation without notice.
Normal service will be resumed ... I hope ... Real Soon Now.
Well, so, OK, Caveat Emptor went down as well as I expected it to - provocative (& not immediately gratifying) theme, and a badly written tale to boot - so no surprise that it wasn't appreciated.
Except that it got a lot of feedback.
Specifically, lots of Feedback in terms of ostensible typos; ostensible only in the sense that SOL appears to have a different interpretation of an html file from mine - and W3C, come to think of it, but ...
But, hey, that's not the point. What bothers me is that I got a whole load of feedback when things went wrong, even if (IMHO) it wasn't my fault.
Or, a load of people found it within themselves to fill in the oh so carefully provided feedback form when their reading was slightly inconvenienced. In the interim, however, looking at comparable stats for the last story I posted Wisdom: Antithesis - more or less the same number of people have read - or at least downloaded - the the damn thing, and NOT ONE PERSON HAS BOTHERED TO COMMENT.
As it happens, I quite like Antithesis, but that's not the point. What is the point is that none of this stuff gets written just out of thin air. I'm not an infinitely fast typist and, even if I were, I do have to come up with stories, characters, etc etc. Whether you think they're good stories/characters/etc, that's up to you. I know that I spend time that could have been spent doing other things writing the fuckers. What I - and, I suspect, every other person who posts on this site - would welcome is some sort of feedback.
And not anonymous feedback. I do get that and its a pain. Frankly, I see anonymous feedback, I think: You're a dickhead. I will read the comment, but, hey, I've already prejudged you. Sorry, but I do put effort into this stuff; I'm not a prima donna, I can cope with people telling me they don't like what I post. But it gets really annoying when people tell me things like "your story was shit" without giving me the chance to ask why, what... - even how I might do better?
Because I would like to.
You know, that's almost the point?
Quick note to say thanks to all the people who've commented on the stories I've posted so far - sure as hell get a lot more feedback around here than on other sites I could mention.
Unfortunately, this means I'm having difficulty answering them all - and a couple have been long and detailed critiques and need similar responses, I think - but I'm doing my best, so please be patient :-)