Oof... · 2:58am Oct 8th, 2012
Ahhh, my god... Just got back my second EQD pre-reader thingamajig for Wider World...
I mean...
Jesus.
Like, I trotted over to my email, fresh from some editing on chapter 4, actually thinking my story was halfway decent now. I refresh it, see that I've got a message from EQD. I'm actually excited now, yeah? But... damn. The guy didn't seem to have a nice thing to say, and I get that it's not his job to, but man. The first pre-reader who took a look at this story, before I even had editors, had some good things to say. Like, actually made me want to keep going, keep trying, you know?
This second guy was actually good, though. The problems he found were more real. Like, I actually felt like they were the kind of things that could be fixed with some serious effort, rather than vague, poorly-explained, subjectively-observed stuff that nothing much can be done about. The way he put them to me was really depressing, though. Like he was telling me cold, hard, sweeping facts about why my piece is a failure...
It even got to the point that, for a few moments, I started wondering how anyone could have possibly favorited my story. I'm pepped up, then I spot this email, and then five minutes later I'm even finding myself and my own writing just utterly boring. I was disappointed that my story had fallen short. Then I was disappointed in myself for thinking I was "good enough" for EQD. Then I was disappointed in myself for being disappointed in myself.
And now I'm disappointed in myself for sounding whiny.
I'm not going to stop writing this story, though. That'd disappoint me more than anything. I just won't try to get it onto EQD again. This experience was just too depressing for me to give it another shot, at least with this story.
Sorry for venting. Don't take this as compliment-fishing, or anything. I just wanted these thoughts out of my head.
You CAN argue with EqD and Win. Look at all the fics I got in...
409364
Really? Heck, I asked that first pre-reader for clarification, and mentioned that some stuff wasn't actually erroneous, but he never got back to me. I just kind of assumed after that that you only had one shot with a guy.
409381
Nope. The Pre-readers usually respond to stuff sent into their inbox. Perhaps they're just getting round to it.
If you want to, you could always just bug Vimbert about it over here. It's a pretty cool group with a thread on it that's a bit like the 'ask a pre-reader anything' thread on /fic/, except it's on Fimfiction.
Oh, and you should know about this too, Daggers, so 409364.
And now to move on to the actual blog: ouch. I don't even know what the prereader's said, and still. Ouch. Sorry SALT wasn't of more use, Burraku, even with it probably having the highest number of reviewers on a fic that I've seen in a while.
412441
Thanks for all of that, Aquillo. And really? Three's the best we've been able to do for a while? We need to round up some more members.
412599
I meant it when I said I was beginning to think I was the only one. Cheezesauce crops up in fics from time to time, but aside from that, I think I'm the one who handles most of them.dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/shrug_Twilight_Sparkle.png
(I may have also held back a bit on yours because there were two other people on it, and I wanted to encourage them into reviewing more. Sorry again.)