Hey Alrik, you shouldn't let the negative feedback you've gotten for this story get you down, for several reasons. Take WinterFox' feedback: she's a darn tough critic, but she gave Rhianna equally negative feedback on the novella. That doesn't make Rhianna's writing bad either.
You could argue that Rhianna got more positive feedback than you did, but that's no surprise for me: Rhianna is somewhat considered a *star* on this forum and her novella has been through a bit of marketing: people tend to expect and *want* such a story to be good. You, Alrik, don't get that kind of publicity for your work and your work is therefore considered *amateuristic* (which has a very pejorative sound to it, but basically it really just means that you wrote it for your own, not for the public and not for a publisher): people who read this kind of work, will have a different attitude towards it, no specific expectations (or worse: lower expectations) and no explicit desire for the work to be good. Just like love tends make blind, the desire for a published work to be good plus the star status of a writer, can blind a reader from any negative aspects of a story, or at least encourage the reader to praise the good aspects of the work.
So much for comparing. Then there's that other kind of comparing:
There's the point you made about The Adorant being one of your favourite: so if some or many people didn't like this work, does it make all of your other works any *worse* than this one? Of course not!
Often an artist's favourite work will not be his fans' favourite work, not just often, but very often this is the case; simply because his favourite work has a certain personal value in it, things of himself are in it, memories, feelings, that none of his readers have experienced: whatever words you write will not be read in the same way you heard or saw them in your mind.
Personally I like writing, but I don't consider myself a writer, I just can't keep it up, it's a challengeing and rewarding, yet difficult, boring, exhausting and lonesome task. I do write music though, and it's exactly the same: I've had lots of negative feedback on some of my own favourite pieces - because the critics just hear tones and melodies, where as every tone and every melody for me is a memory or a feeling that means something for me.
Finally, let's not forget your own achievements: how many *amateur* writers had their poetry published in an international computer game? If your work were really so bad, I doubt that the Larians - who are a profit making company afterall - would even have considered placing any of it scattered around the world of Rivellon to be read by every gamer who buys their product.
Chear up Al, nothing's lost at all <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
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