[MISC] #44: Running Away & Insecurities in Writing

I'm not really sure why I'm making this post. But I wanted to write my thoughts down, I guess. It relates to an earlier post I made, after all.

So, I'm working on an assignment for 'Narrating the Self', and I'm tasked with writing a scholarly-personal narrative exploring a self. I'm exploring my past self, 2013-2015 Katie, who begun her online presence by publishing fanfiction on Fanfiction.Net. Her first fanfictions were about CARDFIGHT!! Vanguard. They were entitled 'On Cray', 'The Royal Pranksters' and 'Days in the Castle'. The anime series follows several characters and their experiences battling in a card game, with "units" from another planet much like our own, called Cray. I wrote fanfiction about those units, those cards. 'On Cray' didn't include Original Characters (OC's), but TRP and DitC did. My friends and I enjoyed them and I was glad others were too.

I made the mistake of finishing DitC in 2019, since it left off on a cliffhanger ending. My writing style was too drastically different, and the tone changed significantly to become much more mature. I personally enjoyed it -- and there wasn't a big backlash against it, so I thought, "Hey, nobody really cares. Well, I guess that's it for me."

I then made another chapter in January 2020, showcasing my highly-improved writing style and talked about plans to reboot TRP. I presented a few samples of writing in the story without context, to leave a bit of mystery (but they still explained themselves well!) Months went by, nobody said anything. I was too busy with my assignments, anyway.

During this course, I revisited those works and noticed someone commented. He left... two very lengthy reviews, pointing out the flaws and unclear details in my finishing chapter and the sample chapter. I talked about this in my post.

I... was bristled.

I made, what seems now in retrospect to be a horrible mistake, a reply. Combating a few points, conceding some, ultimately calling out this highly destructive post. No positive or neutral points. No "thanks for sharing". No nice sentences pointed out. I felt like I deserved SOME praise.

He said thanks, and then vetoed some of my points. He ended up by trying to be positive, saying thanks and saying my writing style was nice and easy to read. I thought that would be it.

Wrong.

He came back a few days ago... and called me out for writing pedophilia in my story, in the part 2 chapter I wrote to fix the cliffhanger. Since I said it was a self-insert from Age 13-15, then that means a grown man had sex with and impregnated a minor.

This... was never the case. Granted, I never said the characters' ages aloud, but I always envisioned my friends and I as 18+, since my young brain always thought that only 18+ people could have jobs. And also, it was heavily implied the characters had sex, and a character later makes a joke about child-rearing, but in my headcanon for this scene I didn't write, they used protection...

"I'm done being positive with this work", he finished his review. To add fuel to the fire, some guest user added, "Yeah I agree with this Rob dude, seems like the author just fapped".

It was surprising after so much positivity and confidence from being in these writing courses and especially this semester, how absolutely crushed I felt, how much I cringed at myself.

I began rereading On Cray, TRP and DitC recently for my assignment, reading them in that order, the order they were made. Yesterday, I fixed the DitC summary page to include "[All characters are over the age of 18. Always have been."] and thought that could be the end of it.

But today I noticed he... came back. Again. I could barely bring myself to skim the comments but he started off with something like "I wasn't going to come back to this, but I found time inbetween my internship and part time job" and lay into my piece a bit more. My vision blurred like it did on the day that I watched my Grade 3 work be covered in red corrective marker on the data projector.

"How insecure is a writer to have to demand positive feedback?" I think is.. what he said, before going into it a lot more as his final point. How insecure was I to make a response chapter to try and get the last word in, like a belligerent child.

Because I had established a precedent of responding to his very lengthy comments, I felt like I had to make one today... I conceded his overall comments, clarified a few points, and then thanked him again for taking the time to read and write such words. I acknowledged that as a writer, there are tough things I need to bring myself to hear. I shouldn't have asked for positive feedback like that.

And like the complete coward I was -- even after all those words about how I need to get used, as a writer, to receiving criticism and rejection -- recoiling at the first sign of negativity, I announced that after this assignment, I was going to download my stories and then delete the bad ones off the site.

A totally pathetic move. It was such a p****y thing to say, let alone admit. Maybe it was a disguised apology, "I'm sorry you had to see this, I'll permanently delete it off the site now so nobody's eyes will be cursed". Past Katie was so appeasing, apologising for delays in her earlier chapters. Maybe nothing's changed.

I ended off the post with "If you want to talk more in the future, then just damn PM me" but on second thought, removed the word "damn" to not seem aggressive. It was a coded "Stop humiliating me publicly" and maybe a "Get off your anon high horse and face up to me properly". I mean, he wasn't really anon given he put his full name on the comments, but still. I was embarrassed at the thought of more people reading the review section after his, so I wanted to delete it.

I feel as though I've let down Past Katie. Seeing those comments made me feel like a mother trying to protect her child. Poor, sweet, vulnerable girl. Just trying to share her stories with the world, with her and her friends as the stars. And I feel like I've ruined it. I should've just left it the way it was. Preserved her memory the way it should've been left. Let the stories be buried in the Fanfiction.net archive, where nobody will ever find it again unless they knew where to look.

Heh. It's so funny that in my pre-select kit for this Creative Writing program, I said that I typically read fanfiction so I knew what tropes and mistakes to avoid. And yet, I saw many of them in my original writings in my revisiting the past few days. Maybe it really was objectively bad.

What am I going to do now...? It's 1am, so probably get some sleep. There's no notice of the commentator having seen my recent reply chapter, entitled "A reply - The end of it", so nothing I can say on his front. I'm not sure if I'll really delete the stories after I get my assessment back. They can still serve as a valuable lesson, and I sort of figure in the next comment, that guy is going to tell me they ARE valuable lessons and call me out on being such a coward in the face of criticism.

I definitely can't do this in the future. Run away from things I've written because they receive backlash. Because not everything I write will sit well with 100% of people. That's just the way life is -- people's views are subjective. I should definitely back down and delete or fix things if I'm wrong, but I can't afford to back down like I have today. It's unbecoming of a writer.

Ugh... I guess that's enough out of me. Time to hit the hay. At least this post could be used in my formation of the final assignment. I might have to delete it though so TurnItIn doesn't pick it up.

Thanks for reading. Looking forward to the rehearsals, everybody.

-Katie, the Plague Wanderer