8 A Review

For the next week, I immersed myself in writing. Meeting people when I went down to the shop was all the socializing I did.

My three friends and some other folks kept messaging me now and then, usually to have a chat, but even when I saw their notifications I simply left them alone.

There were quite a few distractions, and they had managed to lure me in. Even if I went away, though, I returned my focus on writing.

When ideas were scant, I paced around in my room. Playing out the scenes and imagining it all in my head. How I wanted to make this thing blue up or that thing fall.

Now and then, words escaped me, but the chapters still went out.

I also ended up picking a new habit. Quite a bad one. Maybe this was the real reason why social media didn't manage to trap me much these days.

The forums.

I kept visiting the forums like a homebody suddenly hooked to window shopping. It was pretty exciting to see the people and their talks. People in the same field as I was in, doing the same thing that I was.

It wasn't a market in a foreign land that I did not speak the language of. It was, in fact, a place filled with my own kind. Everyone was interested in writing and their books and stories, just like me.

This sense of community was addictive.

"But these review swaps are annoying…"

[Why not engage in one?]

The system suggested as I scrolled down the forums. The next chapter was left half-written on another tab.

"Nope. Do you think I have no pride? I already have 30 followers, maybe someone will write a review soon."

[Hm…]

Asking for reviews like that wasn't good in my eyes.

But as days passed by, I got another comment.

{Who wrote this? Dropped}

It was discouraging.

These comments all lit me up whenever I woke up, but when I saw them being negative it pricked me.

Comments were like rolling a twenty-sided die—an icosahedron that DnD players used. You only got a comment if you rolled a natural 20, which was rare on its own. If that comment was negative? That thought would linger until more comments came in.

For a few more days, I continued just like that. In that slight limbo of writing and uploading, scrolling, and waiting for comments and followers. The only measure of moving ahead I had was the possible increase in follower counts, which came rarely. And even if it did, it wasn't as exciting as before.

It felt as if barely three people were reading, and two of them hated it.

I did roll a few more nat 20s, but all of them seemed discouraging.

It was just a few more anyway.

I had reached forty chapters, my chapter count was higher than my follower count…

And my comments were still below five.

This lack of interaction had started to slowly eat me up. I wondered where I went wrong, why I wasn't blowing up.

Every night I wondered if my book would be a hit when I woke up the next day, and scoffed every morning while muttering 'What was I thinking.'

Time was moving strangely. My days had taken on a weird routine of forums and novels and forums again. I couldn't tell one day apart from another, was this how the lockdown had felt? It was a shitty feeling to have on vacations.

Well, as the world would have it. Pride was a thing that only lasted when it had enough backing. It needed proof to stay strong.

My proof was dwindling.

I checked other books again, ones that had started with me were now reaching hundreds of followers while I was stuck at 30-something.

I finally caved, and in the end, decided to do a review swap.

The mechanics of a review swap were quite simple. You just read each other's works and talked about what the other could improve or what the other did good.

It wasn't as rosy as it sounded. I had seen the forums for days now, and I knew there was something much more messed up happening here.

People did not bother telling others what was bad about their story. No one had the guts to call someone out. People did not want to say 'Hey you suck at this' and that was what made these review swaps popular.

It was simply ego-stroking. It was a way to refill that pride meter to make you confident in yourself again.

That was all review swapping amounted to.

I made a simple post on the forums. A little humble, saying I had no idea what I was doing wrong and why I was not getting followers.

It took an hour, but I got a response.

{21_TheGreatWolf_: I don't usually do this…}

It was a familiar name. Great Wolf. I thought I had seen this author before.

Excited, I clicked on his response and scanned through it.

{Do you even know what you are doing? This doesn't seem like something even amateurs would right.}

My lips slammed shut.

{You switch your descriptions. Going from trees to the forest and then back to the leaves? There is supposed to be an order for these things. And the number of 'I's in your chapters is insane. Maybe read some good first-person books and figure out how they avoid using the same pronoun over and over. It becomes a drag to read.

There is also no clarity in your writing. I have no idea what you're thinking and what you're speaking. It's like half of the stuff that the reader should know is still in your head.

At least there are no spelling mistakes, which is good. But your quality itself is fundamentally flawed. It's a much bigger issue than spelling mistakes. You have to revamp everything if you want to continue. It would be best to read some more and understand what writing is actually about. Don't just throw words on the screen and pray it makes sense.

Overall, it's pretty bad. A 2/10.}

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Yeah…

That was that.