anraa21
Hey!
Anraa here...
You had commented on my book Happiness In Simplicity...
I really needed to vent to someone who gets it, so I'm taking you up on your offer!
Lately, the whole writing journey has felt so heavy. You know how much effort goes into this—spending endless hours polishing the storyline, making sure it feels relatable and natural, and keeping the language and punctuation clean. Even though my book is unedited, I still put in so much care to make sure the language actually reads well.
There are some errors in some places definitely in the book, but readers jump onto the opportunity to correct me. See, I love that they correct me so that I get to know where to make the changes. But what pains me, is that they don’t comment on the characters or on the storyline. They just comment to point out mistakes.
What hurts is that readers don't even seem to appreciate that effort in the comments. You see so many wildly popular books where the story idea is great, but the grammar and polish show they barely spent any time on the actual writing—yet they get tons of engagement! Meanwhile, we try so hard to deliver quality, and it goes unnoticed.
To top it off, a reader recently added my book to a reading list literally named ‘Feels like AI; Did Not Finish’. It crushed me. After spending so much time thinking of the storyline, writing it and pouring heart into every chapter, having it dismissed like that just stings. I just really needed to get this off my chest to another author who understands how disheartening it can be.
big19boss
@anraa21 personally I always reach out to new authors at the end of the book atleast. With advice. Even on there Instagram if I can find it. I used to do this back in the day too. To all sort of authors big and small. Ask them for advice on upcoming works. But I dont think people are online anymore, atleat in that demographics . Those who seem online in this community of Indian novellas are rude and lowkey (I may sound classiest in a sense) not that attracted to intellect. They kinda want to read things far away from reality, lack of dopamine means they want progress fast or atleast in colourful language. And a refined language can make them feel alienated. Maybe we are being punished for doing a decent job of writing.
big19boss
this message may be
offensive
@anraa21 I know what you feel definitely. I have never been active on the Indian side of wattpad but I totally get. Some of my peers had millions of views with shitty writing and shit plot. But no matter how much I work, I had literally 3 repeat readers who commented. And it took me so long to cross the 70k mark. Like my book is in treading rn after years of being completed. I got like 7 - 8 readers reading my book in a single night but honestly no comment. Even after reading the whole book. IDK what people feel like now. Maybe its a generation thing, maybe its the lack of empathy, they dont care about the author, just the work. My suggestion is find a different platform to write. Or maybe have a community of irl people who read and can give you active feedback. But honestly that's all not possible. I know. So we have no solution until and unless we want to lower ourself to those tactics. I was hoping to write an Indian story myself but now I am not sure.