Sunday, February 10, 2008

Final say on a petty issue.

This is my last word on the subject.

On February 2, 2008 Cincgreen posted a review of the first part of my story EarthFall.

In the review he took portions of the story and edited them(rewrote) before publishing the review to his site.

http://cincgreen.blogspot.com/

My complaint with this was first having to discover the review by a 3rd party source and then discovering the rewritten portions. I posted a response to my blog, his blog, and the PPMB. In this response I requested he remove the rewritten sections from the review. He has acknowledged my request and apparently denied it.

For me this matter was dead and I haven’t mentioned it again in my blog but I have responded to various prompts on the PPMB tread I started.

http://www.thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21219

Now it seems he has put up another message on another blog. This one is addressed to me but he failed to inform me of its existence. (Again I had to find out from a 3rd party.) I do think it’s time to clear up a few things.

http://dariaphans.blogspot.com/

Cincgreen did post rewritten portions of my story on his blog. I never made the claim he was trying to take credit for the story and when someone got that impression I corrected that at once. I have no objection to any review but this goes past the line of reviewing to editing in my opinion. I have made no demands for anything. I made a request, without threat or insult. Now I feel insulted.

The second blog post lets me know all I need to know about this person.

Let me offer a review of Cincgreen. By taking liberties with my work you weaken your review in my eyes because anything that distracts from a more important message is a bad thing. Next writing a blog addressed to me and not telling me is rude and to be blunt I have no more time to waste on you. Congratulations you have defeated your own message.

Finally I am emailing this to Cincgreen so there can be no doubt. My request to remove the edited sections from the review stands but feel free to review any work I’ve ever done.

Legendeld

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, but what? Now you've decided that you're insulted and there's no need to take into account what he had to say about your work? The whole time you've come across as feeling insulted (and it took great self-control on my part to say 'feeling insulted' instead of 'a whiny baby') and as if you're looking for an excuse not to accept the points made in the review.

Here's the thing, as a writer you have an enormous creative talent. The sheer number of ideas you produce insures that you will have more hits than misses, in spite of your technical drawbacks in the actual execution.

The point made in the review, about fanfic in general, not just your work, is that good ideas do not always go hand in hand with skillful wordsmithing. Creativity cannot be learned, technique, however, can. That means that you have the opportunity to improve.

In order to do that, though, you have to be willing to listen when people tell you how to improve. Even seek out criticism, however harsh and painful it may be. If you do not, you will only ever be mediocre.

Whatever you think about Cincgreen, what he said about your work is true. And by dismissing it, you hurt only yourself.

Anonymous said...

@anonymous 4:56pm:
I can't really see, where you get the idea that now legendeld is insultet by the review. Or that he is going to ignore the advice put forward in said review.

If legendeld hadn't been told about the review by a 3rd party, he wouldn't even be in a position to dismiss anything.

As far as I can see Legendeld has no problem with his work being reviewed. He even says so in this blog entry. Neither does he seem to have any issues with the review not being a positive one. In his first entry to this topic on 2008-02-04 he even states "that the person's criticism is fair".

To me it seems that Legendeld has only two issues with CINCGREEN's review:
1. CINCGREEN used and edited parts of legendeld's work. Admittedly, I don't see a problem with that myself, seeing that CINCGREEN only showcased some of his points. But it would have been polite for CINCGREEN to ask or at least tell Legendeld after the fact. Which leads to
2. CINCGREEN never bothered to inform legendeld of the review. And here I can see the legendeld's problem: The whole review seems to revolve around the technical weaknesses of Legendeld's writing and how he could improve on them. Which makes it - IMHO- pretty useless for the potential reader of the actual story, but quite interesting for the author. But if he wasn't told about the review, how could he learn from it?

Ok, you could still say that CINCGREEN didn't send the review to Legendeld because it wasn't meant for him. But his latest blog entry WAS addressed to Legendeld and CINCGREEN didn't seem to inform him of that either...

Anonymous said...

He said it himself, and I quote, "Now I feel insulted." and, "Congratulations you have defeated your own message."

Anonymous said...

Again: insultet by the treatment he got AFTER the review. Having to find out from a 3rd party about a message (not the review) addressed at oneself because the writer didn't see the need to let one know he wrote and posted it, can be somewhat insulting.
And CINCGREEN not telling Legendeld about his latest message seems quite self-defeating (assuming the message had indeed Legendeld as 'primary target')

cyde said...

All I'm going to say is this.

What CINCGREEN did constitutes 'fair use' for the purpose of criticism. If you're insulted by what he wrote, go find his old website with his old reviews. You got off REALLY easily.

I'd advise looking beyond your ego and actually reading the review. It was very constructive, and might help you grow as a writer.