Potpourri

[silburygirl]

It occurs to me, as I sit here atop the bookshop's space heater, nibbling at my breakfast burrito and contemplating life, that I suck at leaving reviews. It seems particularly relevant at the moment, because the sshg_exchange is posting, which means that I have to review rather a lot of fic.

Comments

[wonderfulwrites]

I'm terrible at reviewing, too. I get tongue tied. I feel like I should leave something more detailed than "I enjoyed this," but its hard to know what to say, and then even though I should just leave them something simple, to let them know I was there and liked it, I don't.

I don't even bother with concrit, unless someone invites it in an author's note or i know them well enough to know how it will go down.

[silburygirl]

I suffer from the curse of shyness, which means that if the author could see me, I would be blinking up at them bashfully and begging them not to judge me for my idiotic reviews. I see people like mundungus42 leaving these awesome, blushworthy comments everywhere and feel bad because my pithy little one liners take so much out of me.

I do the same on concrit... And I feel much more comfortable bringing it up privately, so it's almost guaranteed to be for someone I know.

[harmony_bites]

I have a hard time reviewing, and for a lot of the reasons you've expressed. Well, here's the thing, I'd have one of say 4 reactions to a fic

[silburygirl]

I'm completely with you on all of those-I feel like anytime I review something I don't like, the author can tell... I can see it in their responses.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

[harmony_bites]

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Paranoids have enemies too....

Most people aren't that good at reviews. I've rarely seen ones that are long, meaty and insightful both in praise and crit. Maybe if we were more encouraging of crit, of the practice of expressing those parts of a story that didn't work for us, we'd be better at the praise part, and it would come across more often as sincere.