Gather.com experience

As I stated earlier, I recently signed on the Gather.com website at the advice of a writer friend to gain more exposure, and a chance to win a writing contest, for my completed novel, The Antiquarian Chronicles. It was certainly an interesting, if not deflating, experience. My work was rated very low by the few people (4) who read it and bothered to comment. I read the guidelines, the contest rules, and the FAQ's and decided to give it a go. After the novel's first chapter was posted, I read the readers' comments and was surprised at the caustic posts. One opined that my use of a southern vernacular was "God-awful". I thought this was funny because I was raised for period of time in the deep South. The same person was indignant that I had, he said, compared a black servant to a black dog. I said in the novel, they both had black hair, both had brown eyes that twinkled when mischief was afoot, etc. It was a comparison, a literary device like a simile, a metaphor, a hyperbole, a pun, a fundamental image device to establish the fact that a rich man's servant/friend and the rich man's pet had certain characteristics in common. How many times have we all noticed the similarity between a pet owner and his or her pet? Have we then made disparaging remarks about it? Hopefully not, but some people have the distinct inability to distinguish between an insult and a literary device in a written work.

I also noted how the same few people seemed to read and comment on the first chapters posted by others. These noteworthy scribes (noteworthy for what I was never able to decipher) took exception to most everything. Amazingly, they cut down to one degree or another most every work posted and the few they had good things to say about were terrible in my own opinion, but I thought these unfortunate authors' efforts were worthy of positive comment if nothing else. It is a difficult thing to put one's thoughts into words, especially cogent words, and place them in the public arena for comment and criticism. Having done so, it is only polite and courteous to find something good to say about a written work before making comments about needed improvements, and even then there is a right way and a wrong way to make suggestions.

After taking all I could from a couple of these salacious coxcombs, I decided to remove my novel so I could submit it elsewhere in the more traditional or contemporary route: through an agent or publisher. I couldn't find where or how to accomplish this so I took the only route I could: I posted a caustic comment of my own about one of these pseudo-erudite commentators. Sure enough it accomplished my purpose. My novel was removed from the site forthwith. Without, I might add, so much as a warning or email notice from the management. They never contacted me or responded to my communications at all in any form whatsoever.

Well, there is no lack of unprofessional behavior on anybodies part. I even felt bad about giving in to my more primitive urges and reacting to their disgusting behavior in like fashion. Oh well, my purposes were accomplished and I did try to be a source of encouragement to all those who posted their work for comment on that site. If someone's work was so bad I couldn't read all of it, I just refrained from commenting on it at all.

Wasn't that what Mother said? If I don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all.