Picking up Choices once again

One thing I've learned through fanfiction is to take criticism with a grain of salt. It's the bread and butter of many online authors, I'd wager--an ignored story is a soon dead story, probably, and the immediate feedback that internet publishing allows for fuels much of the 'industry'. Fanfiction may not be 'real'--which is a whole different issue I might touch on some other time--but that doesn't make the initial posting of a story any less nerve-wracking. After all, if you've spent hours and days and weeks working on something, if you've put a great deal of effort and thinking into something... yeah, you're going to want to know what people think of it. This isn't like submitting an essay at school--those you have to write, and while the grade is important it's not an entirely voluntary production. Fanfiction you write because--well, I suppose there's a whole wack of reasons, but ultimately it's not something you have to do. It's certainly not for the money.

So--feedback's important. I'm lucky, I suppose--generally, what I post garners commentary, though not nearly as much as some. At first it's very easy to take it too seriously. A story can easily be derailed or abandonned because of a nasty or thoughtless piece of criticism. I've never had a story destroyed by someone's feedback, but I have changed or rethought things. That's actually a good thing--that's what feedback's for, right? But what is an author to think upon receiving something like this:

This is the... I dunno, but I have read lots of dark/angst fics like this,
and while the yourway of writing this fic is good, however your plot holes in
this story degrades it. It is ok tohave a Ranma/Akane ending however they way
Akane was written in this fic, is for a lack of abetter word a b!tch, thus when
you are making it a R/A ending it will lower the quality of this fic.

Per se, if you were writting Akane in a better light, I do believe most of
us won't mind if Ranma ends with who however I would stress that you pair Ranma
with someone else who is betterthan Akane (anyone will do, even an OC) or
rewrite Akane's behaviour in this fic. If you are really interested in improving
or finding out what other plot holes you have, try getting reviews from the
people in this forum http://forum.anifics.com/ as there are lots of great authors
in it if not the best of Ranma fanfic authors. (posted to fanfiction.net)

At the same time I received another e-mail commenting on my story:

There was even one instance of my life where I had to explain what just
happened in my life and I came up blank. I shoved your fic to my friend
told her to read it and then I'd explain later. Talk about escaping
responsibility. Heh.Sorry, I was young and sixteen back when that
happened.
[...]
Kidding aside, there's something about Choices that moves a person.
Well, at least it moved me. All these emotions that have been brought to life by
your pen, or rather your keyboard are amazing. Sayuri's hate, Akane's pity,
Nabiki's helplessness -- and though I might misread some of them, I find that
your fic has the most *emotion* one could try to integrate into
writing.

I thought I had a point I was reaching for here but in looking both over again, I guess they're not all that mutual exclusive. The second is the kind that I love to receive, that's kept me, in all honesty, from just abandoning the project ages ago. If anything points to the 'miserable plant in a lone flowerpot' quote, it's a comment like that; and maybe the plant isn't so miserable after all. As for the second: it's the kind of commentary that, being as vague as it is, doesn't bother me as much as it might once have (though obviously it miffed me enough to want to write about it here). And the criticism is still worth noting: the characterization of Akane throughout a lot of the story has been less than complementary, and that needs to be worked on.

The comment came just a little too early, though. I was just about to do that--I think. The story, quite by accident, I think, has just reached a major turning point; one of the most important recogniztions of the entire work thusfar; and I'm hoping that it'll go a long way towards recitifying the very problem the first piece of criticsm points to. But I'll save that for the next post.