Something happened that I fixed in a routine kind of way, but which caused problems for at least one reader. I thought an explanation might be in order.
SOL has a limit to the size of a chapter, in terms of how much will fit on one page. I'm sure most of you have read chapters that have a page two or three or even four. I don't personally like that, so I make all my chapters fit on one page.
The way I do that is to write the whole story (or book) and then break it into chapters. I know roughly what size to make each chapter file.
On my most recent post, Life Isn't Fair, I somehow forgot to split the last chapter, which got posted as chapter seven. I didn't realize it was a multi-page chapter until it was already posted. When I found out, I investigated, to find out why, and found that chapter seven was as long as two of my normal chapters.
So I split it and re-posted chapter seven, adding chapter eight, which had not existed when the story was listed as "final".
I didn't think that would matter to anybody, because if you downloaded the story when it was final, you got the whole thing in seven chapters. If you download it now, you get the whole thing in eight chapters.
But one reader went back to what he thought was the last chapter (chapter seven) and looked for something he didn't find. He wrote to me asking where it was.
And this blog entry is the result of that.
So now you know.
Assuming you were even interested (grin).
So why would am I interested?
Well, this isn't the first "mistake" I made, posting this story. At one point, when I tried to post the original chapter seven, my mouse landed on "Foreword" instead. I had completely forgotten I'd prepared a foreword, and it never got posted, until it was mistakenly sent in as chapter seven. I got no less than sixty messages about that. Five of those said that they scored the story low because of it.
Now I've said it before, and I'll say it again now. Scores don't mean that much to me. I get pretty good ones in most cases, and I do see that as validation of a sort, but what tells me how I'm really doing is feedback that's detailed. It can detail why someone liked something, or why they didn't. Either way, it helps.
But people who say "You made a mistake so I'm deducting points" don't tell me anything that helps. And people who tell me proudly "I never give a 10" don't help me (or anybody else, for that matter,) either.
So I really don't worry too much about the scores that those people give me.
Want to know what does worry me?
With all the scores I have that are in the eight range, and with all the nice things reviewers say, I haven't gotten much in the way of nominations for Golden Clitorides in years. That worries me.
I'm not complaining, mind you. If people don't think my stuff is good enough, then they don't. And that means I'm not doing a very good job. That's the worrying part.
On the other hand, I still write because it's fun.
And having fun is better than any score or accolade.
It also means I don't get all freaked out when I make a mistake.
Thanks for reading,
Bob