The Kind of Comment I love/need. Thanks Goodwab

[pink_silk_glove]

Do you want money or not? No one ever asks for abusive "feedback" comments.

Now you're just being silly. But to answer that, we ask for feedback, or at least we say that we do, and abusive feedback is still feedback. But in actuality. most of us don't want abusive feedback, we just want affirmations, which means that we don't really want feedback as much as we think that we do.

Still curious about this one, BTW:

First, the story is doing nothing to comment on me as a writer or a person or on any of my work. I'm just reading. Second, the boring stories (at least as I define them) are the moldy hot dog in the gutter. I've had that hot dog many many times. I'd like something different, a different experience, something more nuanced, more engaging. Just like once you learn to play Chopsticks on the piano, it starts getting boring. You need to learn a new piece. That is all.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You can look at shit neutrally and pull nuggets out of it. Doesn't make it not shit.

Arguing so doggedly that shit is not shit makes you look very silly.

You're not even listening, so don't worry about it. Perhaps another time.

 

[Comshaw]

Now you're just being silly. But to answer that, we ask for feedback, or at least we say that we do, and abusive feedback is still feedback. But in actuality. most of us don't want abusive feedback, we just want affirmations, which means that we don't really want feedback as much as we think that we do.



First, the story is doing nothing to comment on me as a writer or a person or on any of my work. I'm just reading. Second, the boring stories (at least as I define them) are the moldy hot dog in the gutter. I've had that hot dog many many times. I'd like something different, a different experience, something more nuanced, more engaging. Just like once you learn to play Chopsticks on the piano, it starts getting boring. You need to learn a new piece. That is all.

First you argue that you get bored with playing Chopsticks and need to move on to something "more nuanced, more engaging" which is an emotional response. Then you finish by saying that wanting to learn a new piece is the only reason you move on? Not that you get bored? I'm beginning to get the vib that you not only know little about others, but you know little about your own motivations.

Aw well, such is the spice of life. T'wood be a boring world indeed if we were all cookie-cutter copies of each other, huh?

Comshaw

 

[pink_silk_glove]

And here we have the problem in a nutshell: lack of understanding and curiosity. Rather than try to figure out or understand why someone else doesn't want to, or can't bring themselves to wade through a pig sty for a maybe, it's easier to project our way of doing things onto others. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Who said that I am projecting or expecting or forcing or demanding or anything like that? All that I am saying is that this is what I have learned, and it has been a great boost to my writing. You can try it yourself if you like, if not, that's up to you.

Do you ever reread what you write? Ever? You state: "Emotions are a very important part of being human." Then you go on to detail how a person can and should just ignore them. I'm sure you try and succeed most of the time. I've witnessed that here in this forum. The disturbing thing is you expect, almost demand that everyone else react the same way you do. You make no allowances for individualism. You make no allowances for humanism. The gist of what you are saying in your post is that most people aren't strong enough or smart enough to do what you believe they should be doing. That is arrogance coupled with intentional ignorance of the human condition.

No, you have either misunderstood or misconstrued what I have said, and perhaps that is on me for my explaining. If I were writing a book or an essay perhaps I would be more precise with my wordings but I am typing this up on my computer on a rather informal forum. Forgive me.

I have not said to ignore all your feelings and become a robot. What I mean is to learn how to separate your feelings from the facts. Feelings are very important. They are our senses beyond the physical, and there is exponentially far more information around us than just the physical. Don't ignore your feelings, but just don't let them tangle your reasoning. If you set your initial reaction aside, does anything look different? Often you will find gems. And not just on feedback to your smut neither - on anything that you might do in life where you are making observations and decisions in emotional moments.

The thing is, you appear not to understand people, their makeup, their motivations, their weaknesses and their strengths at all. You try to discount emotion as a peripheral thing when in reality it's the biggest motivating factor in humans.

As above, I am not discounting emotion at all. I'm just trying to tell you how the heart and the ego work and how that relates to self-esteem and a bunch of other stuff related to that that most people go their whole life not understanding. You think that I'm presuming and such but I'm not. I can see it as it happens. It's not too hard once you learn what to look for.

And do you also realize that you are doing to me exactly what you accuse me of doing to you, presuming what I am thinking/doing?

I will attempt to answer your last question: "...do want to give up control of your life to your emotions or do you want to keep control of your life and make the best decisions possible for your own well-being health and desires?

Do I? Yes I do. Emotion is the spice that makes life worth living. Friendship, love, hate, joy, anger, fear, elation, on and on, emotion is the thing that makes life palatable, makes the things we do worth it. Humans aren't driven by logic or a cold analysis of what path to take because it might be "better". We are primarily driven by emotion. I have no problem using that, enjoying that as one of the best parts of life.

Again, never once said, ignore all emotion. I can just repeat what I said above about learning to separate it from your reasoning. There are times to feel and times to reason, and I have found that reading your critical feedback works best with reasoning. I recommend to anyone else to try it.

The other thing you are ignoring is that taking care of our emotional well-being IS taking care of our health. You do know that desire is an emotion, yeah? There are lots of things we desire, but shouldn't, because it's an emotional response to those things we want.

When did I ever say that we should not take care of our emotional well-being? Do you think that getting angry and deleting a rude comment is a healthy thing to do? Deleting the comment, who cares, but getting angry because someone insulted you or your work? Do you think that deleting the comment or dismissing it will make you less angry? Will change the way that you feel? It might. It might give you feelings of revenge, "fuck you, I'm deleting your shit, hah!" but that is also basically more anger. You do understand that you are acting in anger when you do this, right? Do you not think that it would be more emotionally healthy to let the defensive reaction subside before acting, even if you still choose to dismiss or delete the comment?

This can be extrapolated into the discussion about writing, about "bad stories" getting good ratings. I know you have voiced your opinion that the readers are just low-brow troglodytes and that's why they vote high on a badly written story. Did you ever stop to think that the story, even though it lacks technical sophistication, touched readers on another level? One that you are blind to? Most people don't look at a painting by Monet or Augusta Savage and judge it on the technical merits. Most judge it from the heart, an emotional response.

Well, I'm not going to get into this one because obviously you have no idea how I judge a story and all that you are trying to do now is attack me for something not pertinent to the thread. And you've done this before. You have been very spiteful and enraged against me a number of times. I might advise you that it's not good for your emotional well-being. But then again, that choice is yours and yours alone.

I've lived my time in a cold insular "logical" shell. I broke out of that sometime ago.

So have I. That's how I learned to embrace my emotions daily, so maybe you are on the right track after all. ; )

 

[pink_silk_glove]

First you argue that you get bored with playing Chopsticks and need to move on to something "more nuanced, more engaging" which is an emotional response. Then you finish by saying that wanting to learn a new piece is the only reason you move on? Not that you get bored? I'm beginning to get the vib that you not only know little about others, but you know little about your own motivations.

Aw well, such is the spice of life. T'wood be a boring world indeed if we were all cookie-cutter copies of each other, huh?

You are so determined to make sure that I am wrong wrong wrong that you are looking in every word, every letter, every comma, for any tiny little crack that you can trounce. You have decided that in your world I have to be wrong and there is nothing that I can do to change that, so I am wrong. Congratz.

Meanwhile, over here in the real world. ; )

 

[WittyUserName]

I just wanted to give a big shoutout to fellow Lit member GOODWAB.

Why? Because I just published my 13th story, The More Mom. And even though I proofread it (like, a lot), a bunch of little errors still slipped through. Nothing major—just the kind of stuff that can pull readers out of the moment.

GOODWAB read the whole thing, left a glowing comment, and gently pointed out the fixable issues. That’s precisely the kind of feedback I appreciate: start with the story—was it good? Twisted? Erotic? Engaging?—then slide into the technical stuff with kindness. Super helpful, super supportive.

I bring this up because in the past, I've had people go full Mr. Zimmer (my old junior high English teacher, may he rest in grammar hell). Just nitpicky corrections with no love for the story itself. Zero value. All scolding.

But GOODWAB? Total opposite. They might not be posting their work here (yet?), but I’m following them anyway so they’ll see when I drop new stuff—and hopefully keep sending those helpful, encouraging vibes my way.

So yeah, let’s all try to be a little more like GOODWAB.

—WT

PS: I've uploaded my corrected files, so a corrected version of the story should repopulate the file soon.

Always nice to receive a great comment! And I agree, I hate those little errors. I bet Laurel hates me because I submit so many edit chapters. :/

 

[OddLove]

It's tough. I recently started using a Read-To-Me software called Balabolka that was recommended from another writer and I catch so many mistakes. Just the pacing and flow of sentences, clunkiness of dialog or paragraphs, words repeated twice in a row, "and and then!", and tons of other things. Even after I stopped rushing to get out a story ASAP, I still have many mistakes. So anyone who can comment and nicely point out some of the errors without being smug or rude is actually an incredibly rare kind of human being IMO. Every aspiring writer could use some GOODWAB's in their lives.

 

[filthytrancendence]

You're not even listening, so don't worry about it. Perhaps another time.

I suppose quadrupling down with condescension is one way to end an argument.

Doesn't do a lot to mitigate the silliness. But I suppose your only path to that would be admitting your view is incoherent, and we can't have that, can we?

Perhaps another time.

I'll go back to providing thorough, helpful, carefully considered feedback. You can keep whinging about the lack thereof as long as you enjoy making yourself look silly.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I suppose quadrupling down with condescension is one way to end an argument.

Doesn't do a lot to mitigate the silliness. But I suppose your only path to that would be admitting your view is incoherent, and we can't have that, can we?

Perhaps another time.

I'll go back to providing thorough, helpful, carefully considered feedback. You can keep whinging about the lack thereof as long as you enjoy making yourself look silly.

Two points on condescension.

1 - If you see condescension in anything that I've said in this thread, that's on you. Go ahead, I can't stop you.

2 ~ Let's for argument sake say that I am/was being condescending. You are certainly being condescending to me (foolishly so, sorry to say). So it's okay for you condescend to others, but not okay for anyone to condescend to you.

And just some friendly advice: obviously you're a bit new here and don't know me well enough, sarcasm doesn't work on me - I'm the queen of it. ; )

 

[Comshaw]

Who said that I am projecting or expecting or forcing or demanding or anything like that? All that I am saying is that this is what I have learned, and it has been a great boost to my writing. You can try it yourself if you like, if not, that's up to you.



No, you have either misunderstood or misconstrued what I have said, and perhaps that is on me for my explaining. If I were writing a book or an essay perhaps I would be more precise with my wordings but I am typing this up on my computer on a rather informal forum. Forgive me.

I have not said to ignore all your feelings and become a robot. What I mean is to learn how to separate your feelings from the facts. Feelings are very important. They are our senses beyond the physical, and there is exponentially far more information around us than just the physical. Don't ignore your feelings, but just don't let them tangle your reasoning. If you set your initial reaction aside, does anything look different? Often you will find gems. And not just on feedback to your smut neither - on anything that you might do in life where you are making observations and decisions in emotional moments.



As above, I am not discounting emotion at all. I'm just trying to tell you how the heart and the ego work and how that relates to self-esteem and a bunch of other stuff related to that that most people go their whole life not understanding. You think that I'm presuming and such but I'm not. I can see it as it happens. It's not too hard once you learn what to look for.

And do you also realize that you are doing to me exactly what you accuse me of doing to you, presuming what I am thinking/doing?



Again, never once said, ignore all emotion. I can just repeat what I said above about learning to separate it from your reasoning. There are times to feel and times to reason, and I have found that reading your critical feedback works best with reasoning. I recommend to anyone else to try it.



When did I ever say that we should not take care of our emotional well-being? Do you think that getting angry and deleting a rude comment is a healthy thing to do? Deleting the comment, who cares, but getting angry because someone insulted you or your work? Do you think that deleting the comment or dismissing it will make you less angry? Will change the way that you feel? It might. It might give you feelings of revenge, "fuck you, I'm deleting your shit, hah!" but that is also basically more anger. You do understand that you are acting in anger when you do this, right? Do you not think that it would be more emotionally healthy to let the defensive reaction subside before acting, even if you still choose to dismiss or delete the comment?



Well, I'm not going to get into this one because obviously you have no idea how I judge a story and all that you are trying to do now is attack me for something not pertinent to the thread. And you've done this before. You have been very spiteful and enraged against me a number of times. I might advise you that it's not good for your emotional well-being. But then again, that choice is yours and yours alone.



So have I. That's how I learned to embrace my emotions daily, so maybe you are on the right track after all. ; )

I'm not going through a whole big explanatory post because I have several times and you keep parroting the same thing. You have consistently stated that allowing one's feelings to dictate one's actions is all about "ego" and that we should turn them off to extract the useful information from a critic's abrasive, demeaning and disrespectful criticism, which led to my analogy of a robot. You have said it numerous times and insisting you didn't is a ridiculous attempt at misdirection. Anyone with half a brain who reads through your previous posts can see that.

As far as how you judge a story, that is history. Anyone who has read through one of your diatribes on stories you consider to be subpar but high scored knows how you judge a story, because it has been presented here by you through your own words. It's not an attack o n you, it's just a fact.

You remind me of the game some of my friends play when we're butting heads in an argument: It doesn't matter whether their position has any truth to it, they think if they repeat it enough, it transmutes into a fact. And if they get in the last word, they win. You get the last word so I guess you win. Enjoy.

You are so determined to make sure that I am wrong wrong wrong that you are looking in every word, every letter, every comma, for any tiny little crack that you can trounce. You have decided that in your world I have to be wrong and there is nothing that I can do to change that, so I am wrong. Congratz.

Meanwhile, over here in the real world. ; )

There isn't anything "tiny" about the cracks and faults in your argument. One could drive an M-1 Abrams through them and have room to spare.


Comshaw

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I'm not going through a whole big explanatory post because I have several times and you keep parroting the same thing. You have consistently stated that allowing one's feelings to dictate one's actions is all about "ego" and that we should turn them off to extract the useful information from a critic's abrasive, demeaning and disrespectful criticism, which led to my analogy of a robot. You have said it numerous times and insisting you didn't is a ridiculous attempt at misdirection. Anyone with half a brain who reads through your previous posts can see that.

As far as how you judge a story, that is history. Anyone who has read through one of your diatribes on stories you consider to be subpar but high scored knows how you judge a story, because it has been presented here by you through your own words. It's not an attack o n you, it's just a fact.

You remind me of the game some of my friends play when we're butting heads in an argument: It doesn't matter whether their position has any truth to it, they think if they repeat it enough, it transmutes into a fact. And if they get in the last word, they win. You get the last word so I guess you win. Enjoy.



There isn't anything "tiny" about the cracks and faults in your argument. One could drive an M-1 Abrams through them and have room to spare.


Comshaw

All right, you win. Please tell me how I should judge a story, how I should rate it, and how I should let my emotions dictate all of that, and how I should react. Please help me be a smarter better writer, critic and person.