I wanna thank all the ruthless flame I received on Fanfiction.net. When I was in my early teens and borrowing other people's internet to post my stories, my iCarly fanfictions were disparaged, raided, and targeted by grammar crusaders on their holy mission to purge the site of whatever they deemed an attack on sacred fan-literature. I was almost a casualty, but I ended up using their cruelty to better my writing. (Though if I met them face to face, I'd cut off my tongue before I'd admit that.)
Part of me wishes I could say that the flame came out of nowhere, but that part of me would be in deep denial. Spanish is my first spoken language, so a lot of what I wrote was poor phonetic English. A majority of the comments I received were a mix of personal attacks and "strongly-worded" advice. I was called a beaner and a wetback numerous times (despite the fact that I was born in the U.S and wrote that on my story,) but BUT bUt I was also told the proper way to spell certain words and form coherent sentences, and I learned it later if only just to bitterly comment back.
This is unique to my writing experience, but I'll always appreciate twenty long condescending rants about where my book goes wrong as much as the single comment that fawns over it . Little things, like a character coming across as dumb or a comment saying that someone doesn't resonate with the storyline, do not bother me and are welcomed. I was exposed to it young, and I did my fair share of crying already. But not much fazes me in terms of comments anymore.
If anything, Tapas has me on edge with all the nice comments, I keep thinking someone's holding it all in. Waiting. Watching. Hoping I'll slip up. Well, I already did. Multiple times. They're late. Chop chop.