I Demand an Arm, a Leg, and the Soul of Your First Born

What kind of title is this?

Well, this is a post about feedback and communication.

This is another post that I’ve been meaning to upload for a few months. So, why I am doing it now? Simple enough: because I can disappear from a group where I was posting at least every other day for over a month now and not get a single nod from any member of that group (ah… the sweet smell of decomp…).

Back on track, shall we?...

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I’ve been writing for a very, very long time, but you can’t really check that because I’d have to reveal the names I’ve been using.

I’ve had several voices, too.

Each experience was different, as well.

In the beginning, it really all started because I’ve always had stories in my head, and one of them became so elaborate that I had to write it down in order to get it out of my skull. I was about fourteen, I’d say (note to self: find where I archived the notebooks and burn them!).

Then, I turned to poetry. When your classmates applaud you because your teacher has made you read the poem you handed her in as a piece of homework… that changes you.

I remained faithful to poetry for quite a few years.

When I started training to be an archivist (which I never became, but was excellent training), we had a sort of history club, and it managed to publish a very serious and respected magazine that was found in the country’s highest institutes.

In the beginning, I just helped with editing and publishing, and after a few months, I offered to write an article on the chosen topic. This first project was given the green light, and I learnt a lot about writing.

My editor back then was also a friend, and he gave me very useful tips about writing. He told me to have all the facts in my head and to write them very clearly (in fact, he told me to make it clear in a way that wouldn’t have my nan twisting her brain cells to understand what I meant). When writing non-fiction, it was invaluable advice: one needs to be comprehensible.

Writing for that little magazine taught me to do research, and it helped through my college degrees, too.

Back then, my editor told me he was happy about my contributions, and a few friends in our club congratulated me for my works, and… that was it.

Everything’s linked, you’ll see, because in order to complete my PhD (I’d been mad enough to pick a topic that required me to consult archives in six countries) I invested in a modem that allowed me to contact National and Regional Archives and Libraries in five countries. That prevented me from having to travel abroad (let’s face it, I’d never have been able to complete my PhD: I had several jobs just to make ends meet and pay my tuition).

When my jobs were done, and my PhD pages typed or edited, I used the modem to have some fun online.

By chance (I’ve got the bad habit of hopping from link to link), I discovered fan-fictions. Being a trekker, I’d heard about those, but I’d never read any. Being connected to the Internet changed that, and I became an avid reader.

And the plot bunnies came back.

With a vengeance.

I still had many stories floating in my head, and now I had fandoms to feed them.

I started writing fan-fictions, for different fandoms. That was great training, too; when you borrow characters and universes that you like, you try (well, at least, I did) to write them close to what they are in the original stories, and if you make them walk a very different path, you try to make it plausible.

As well, you do your research (I did, and I do).

Over the past years, I expanded my knowledge in ways that just reading would never have achieved. I got interested in sciences, detective work, technologies, and since I didn’t want to type silly things, I even “caught” a couple of languages on the road (and I love that).

My ideas for plots haven’t changed much, but I’m much more precise in my descriptions and general backdrops. I guess that my style grew up as I worked to improve the way to translate the kind of film I’ve got in my head when I imagine a story (yea… my stories are just like films in my poor head – no wonder I’ve got to type them I order to make them stop haunting me!).

Today, under this name, the name I chose so that my charming blood relatives won’t find me (either to burn me at the stake, or to pretend that they’ve always loved me should I encounter some success in my endeavour to become a known writer), I’m turning to my own plots (and I’ve got tons of those, too).

Now, you’re wondering where I’m going with this post.

It’s simple. Quite simple.

When I was writing history articles, the only feedback I had was from my editors and my friends (the ones in the same club, which quite limited the reactions). I knew that I was read, but I never got any comment.

When I turned to fan-fictions, I discovered that beautiful thing – feedback.

I have never ever expected my readers to write love letters or full memoirs to praise my work, but a few aeons ago, when I started writing, it was customary to thank people for writing when you’d liked their story (or even just the latest chapter of a huge saga).

Sometimes, it could get ugly, and I’ve witnessed a few “flame wars” (hell! I’m old enough to have fought against the Pink Brigades, because nothing justifies having bullies pestering a writer for not writing the pairing a certain group sees as the One True Pairing).

Step by step, over years, things changed, and new chapters, new works, became normal, and silence insidiously crept in.

I think I might have witnessed fan-fiction sites turning into a new variety of reading spaces, with the newest people considering that it’s all right to click, read and move on in silence.

I’m sure that there are writers (I heard about that kind, in fact) who do demand readers to leave a certain amount of feedback – truth be told, I remember a few writers back in the “golden days” when feedback was more common, who held chapters hostages until they’d got a certain amount of reviews for the chapter they’d just posted.

I think it’s childish to expect to get the kind and number of reviews you want before you release the next chapter, but it’s a bit unkind to read and be silent (all the more since most of the writers with whom I talked about this phenomenon are of the kind who’s happy with just a couple of words or even a mere smiley).

On top of this, I’m not saying that reviews must all be positive, but if someone just writes ‘It sucked.’, who would take it seriously?

One’s allowed to not like a story and feel the urge to tell the author, but you’d better explain why you didn’t like it (‘I don’t like your style; it’s too modern/too old-fashioned/too whatever’, ‘It’s too tragic’, ‘It’s too cheerful’, etc…). Negative reviews hurt a bit, but if they’re not just meant to hurt the writer, they’re welcomed (because writers can learn from them – be it to be more accurate, or to deal with the fact that not all readers will enjoy our works).

In all the reviews I got over the years, the ones that really annoy me, I must say, are the ones that go along the line of ‘You made a mistake.’ and don’t explain what I’m supposed to have got wrong. I’m not going to pretend that I never make mistakes (I vividly remember a story where I typed “pupils” instead of “irises”, and it was incredibly clumsy, and I caught it only after I posted it), but I must say that the irises thingy is rather unusual (thanks to a number of astounding editors, who’ve been helping my plot bunnies and helping me catch most of the silly things before I posted).

I can get all growl-y when I get such a review of the slightly expanded variety and I discover that the meagre review pointing at a mistake is in fact a mistake from some reader who didn’t do his, or her, research and thinks he, or she, is right).

In the beginning, I was merely ignoring such reviews, but now I answer, and I’m no longer nice and I show the reviewer that he, or she, is wrong, not I.

Why am I so nasty now? Because I’m rather a nice gal, who’d be happy with either ":-)" or ":-(" , but I’m not even getting that. 
On one of the sites where I posted my fan-fictions, there’s a very accurate counter and one day the sound of silence killed most of my fanfic plot bunnies (on a certain chapter, I’d had 230 hits in a day. Signs of life? Twelve. Twelve people who took a moment to send me a quick comment or who archived the chapter amongst the things they read. You do the math). I’m not expecting everybody to send a message (that never happened), but a bit more communication would be nice.

As well, if you took a minute to tell me there’s something wrong, I can expect you to add a “but the rest’s kinda okay” or “and anyway, I didn’t like it”. The mere mistake-thingy makes you sound cheap and petty.

Drat! I’m fanging up again; sorry about that.

This silence, this absence of feedback is having peculiar consequences.

The first thing I did was to stop reading the works of my fellow fanfic writers (in consequence, I no longer am sending any feedback). I became silent.

Then, I saw nearly all my fanfic plot bunnies turn to dust (like vampires reduced to ashes by Buffy’s stake).

Now, I’m blogging here, and I’m working on original stories.

Thanks to my dashboard here, I can see you guys register on my counter, which I named ‘I Can See You’ on purpose – and I want to hope that you’re not all just clicking, gasping with horror and hitting the back button (thank Merlin for my handful of faithful commenters – Hi, guys!).

I could suggest that you break the silence, oh silent ones, but now I know, thanks to the other group mentioned in the introduction, that it won’t happen.

It’s a pity. A real pity.