All Comments on 'Dear Younger Me'

Commonly referred to as a 'Fresh set of eyes'.

Having either developed your work or when reviewing, leaving it and coming back to it later is a good way to capture oversights. Obviously, even better, having a friend/colleague reviewing your work is even better.

Having published a few stories and been called out for missing a comma as well as using wrong spellings i can agree with most of what you are pointing out. Anons should be ignored as they don't have the courage to stand on their own. I like an honest opinion of my work as it makes me better. Very hard or almost impossible to self-edit. Thanks for your observations and incite

Paul

“You do you”, was an excellent closing summary!! A writer has only one viable path to success: to write what’s in his, or her, head/heart.

TAT’s final paragraph was the best advice. Write the story you want to write, not what you think someone else wants to read!

Excellent advice - even the bit about "Loving Wives" - but, someone has to write that stuff - else I wouldn't have any of it to read!

Excellent advice, man. I love your work, so please keep going.

Well done. But readers do not seem to vote, rate, or comment much anymore? And just thinking out loud I do wonder why that is? I take a no rating as a bad rating. That's just me, tho. Regardless, nice piece of work with solid advice. Thank you.

I know I'm juvenile, stupid/dumb and boring. And I'm sure you can appreciate the verisimilitude as I contrive to 'get real', but please don't just ignore my comments! (Sorry, I just wanted to try and squeeze in all your trigger words into a couple of sentences. I said I was juvenile.)

I think I recall another author being able to just deactivate anonymous comments at some point but I'm not sure if that's a current site feature or if that would even be popular. It might deactivate anonymous votes as well, which might be detrimental or beneficial, dependant on the story.

I've heard other authors lament the Lit edit submission process before but never having submitted a story before I have no knowledge of the process. I'm assuming the story submission process is just volunteer/staff readers going through the stack of stories and authorizing them when done, and the edit submission is probably an extension of the same process.

Maybe having an online/browser editor function could be implemented? Where the author could edit the story within the browser and it would only flag the new additions to whoever is authorising it? Then the whole story wouldn't have to be reread and it would only depend on the corrections/additions to speed up the whole process. I know I've used text comparison sites before and they seem pretty simple, so the code should be available, and I don't think it would be that complicated on the backend to implement, but then again I don't know the current workflow.

I like what you have to say. Funny tho, do people leave comments anymore? I don't get many, but thankfully the ones I do are positive, so I am grateful for that. Regardless, you helped make up my mind to finish a series I began that I stopped writing due to lack of readers, so thanks for that. I wish you well with your continued writing.

Sage, common-sense advice that could or should apply to one's journey through life.

The last line breaks it down to simplest form; Do you. Do your best. Not someone else's best. Yours.

This is sound advice, for anyone producing creative writing or even creative visual works. I don't write for Lit, but I do write and sometimes comments are discouraging. Thanks for taking the time to write this! -- Chris

FYI, you spelled foe paws right, but it’s wrong. I’m practicing my Captain Obvious persona. :-)

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I really enjoyed this. I’m a sucker, though. I put something in Loving Wives to get more visibility. It was my Christmas story about a truly loving wife.

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My first story was a 750 word. I was editing for CindyTV and thought she could do a good job of it. She convinced me that since it was my idea, I should write it. So I did. My absolutist mostist favoritist comment, which happens to be from my most frequent commenter, Anonymous:

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“B for mechanics, D for story. One can't force a woman one is divorcing to give up her child for adoption. Write what you know.”

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Ummm… a 750 word story is missing tons of details. Besides, I *KNOW* what I’m writing. It’s called FICTION. I’m writing the full version of that story and it’s a runaway train with a mind of its own heading towards 100,000,000 words. OK, I exaggerate a little. Some. Maybe.

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Looking at some of my readers comments, I’m surprised at how many have positive suggestions on improving my writing. One suggested my including humor from the author disrupted the flow. Yes, they were right. No, I couldn’t resist.

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One last thing. It’s frustrating when someone says I need a beta reader or an editor but doesn’t volunteer to fill that role. I started editing by offering to authors I thought I could help. It makes me a better writer.

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As promised…. Like I said at the beginning: I really liked this. Keep on writing and may the comments be longer than the story because it means you poked your readers in their brains, making them think.