By Apparently not a writer - 20/02/2013 16:36 - United States - Hockessin

Today, I uploaded the first chapter of my best writing yet to a popular writing website. After ten minutes, I was thrilled to already see one review and five comments. Each comment was telling me to immediately delete the story because of how horrible it was. The rating was half a star. FML
I agree, your life sucks 30 154
You deserved it 8 417

Same thing different taste

Top comments

Did you do a fanfic of 50 Shades of Grey? Who am I kidding that would become a bestseller.

Comments

Keep working at it, my cousin used to write crappy stuff now she's a big writer for our state paper, and she writes great stuff. Met her writer husband there too.

Don't give up. There are things I wrote ten years ago which I thought were pretty good at the time. Upon recent rereads I realised they were actually crap. Stuff I write these days seems pretty decent to my eyes. When I go rereading those down the line, I imagine they'll look pretty dismal too. Just repeat the pattern until you actually get to the point where OTHER people point to your writing and say, "Hey, that's not bad." Personally, I hope to be pretty mediocre by the time I'm 90.

LeCielNousAide 7

It takes time to get good at writing. A lot of people also don't realize that they aren't so good until an unbiased party tells them so. That's why I don't rely on my friends anymore to critique my stories -- they're too biased and just say "I love it it's great!". OP, I would gladly read your chapter and tell you exactly what's wrong with it so you can improve, since just saying "this is terrible" isn't much help. Also, grammar is the easiest part to improve. If it's issues with the plot or characters, that is difficult and comes with practice. I find basing characters off people I know helps make them more realistic.

I feel you OP. I frequent deviantart (where all my work goes) and a lot of the pieces that I do that are good to me get over looked.. But the crap, 5 second pieces of crap people love? I will never understand that. Keep on writing, I'm sure if you thought it was good it has some merit and potential. The trick to writing I'd showing, not telling. :)

RKD 23

I know, you should see some of the CRAP that gets put up and gets put up on fanfic and so on-and everybody gets weepy and praises it to the skies-just keep it up, Op! You might want to get your writing critiqued by someone that is actually qualified to assess writing, like an English or lit professor you are friendly with-a lot of times people like this are delighted to look at writing for free/or a small gratuity. Just don't give up and realize that EVERYBODY writes Mary Sues, EVERYBODY writes crappy fiction-the key is to keep working at it and improve-I know, just go to the bookstore and look at some of the garbage on the shelves! You can do it!

RKD 23

Oh, yes, and don't forget to check for basic things like spelling/punctuation-I was referring to such things as content in my previous post, but little BIG things like the aforementioned can REALLY turn readers off! If I am reading a fanfic and it has blatant misspellings/punctuation probs, then I will stop reading!

Don't delete it. If they answered that quickly, they're probably just trolling you, or worse, trying to steal your work for themselves the second you delete it.

Next time consider getting a couple of trusted people to beta-read your work before uploading it.

this is why i havent summoned up the courage to upload my writing to any writing websites yet :/ however, it was only the first chapter, maybe the book just hadnt got started properly yet? keep writing OP, theres bound to be someone out there who'll like your work :)