Why It Is Good To Be A Normal Member

[ An essay I wrote to tell myself that it's not that bad to be a normal member, and reason's why not being an upgraded member is still good enough.

Actually, I'll be just plain lying if I said I would be happy being a normal member. If given a chance , or the money , which would have to come from my daddy, I'd be more than happy to upgrade.But since I'm not God, and every wish of mine isn't always fulfilled, for the time being, I am a normal stories.com author. But for all those sad souls out there like me, here are some reasons why I feel being a normal user isn't all that bad. ]

[ There have been a few changes since this article was written.

The biggest change probably is that this site is now called 'www.writing.com'.

Apart from that, the changes that affect Free Users are listed below:

1) The journal is no longer available to new members.

2) A new 'Basic Membership' has been introduced

3) The number of items a Free User may have in his port has been reduced to 5.


But I still maintain that being a free user is not so bad. ]

Why It Is Good To Be A Normal Member

There are somethings in life that no one can have enough of.
Time is one.
Money is the other.

And for me, it surely is true.

One fine day, surfing through the net, I typed : www.stories.com in the internet explorer search bar, just to see what site opened.


I was bowled over by the website, like most of the other members were. So without wasting a moment, I registered.


So excited was I, that without reading the terms and conditions, or the details about my account, I immediately started writing a static item.


And then I saved the item. Two minutes later, I refreshed my portfolio page, and it showed me that my static item had been viewed once.

Imagine my delight! Somebody had actually read my work!


Of course, two minutes later, I refreshed again, and was greeted by 4 shining blue stars!


Somebody had actually liked what I'd written!
4 out of 5 stars is pretty good for a first attempt!


So I hastily wrote one more item. And then one more. Then I wanted to create another item and... WHAT?... "you have reached the item limit of a maximum of three items in 24 hours."


My flight of fancy ended there. I decided that it would be better if I checked the other rules out too.


And there it was : "As a registered author, your portfolio is limited to a maximum of 15 items. To have more items, you can upgrade"

These weren't the exact words, but the meaning was similar.


It felt like someone had shown me how to fly, taken me up to the outer limits of earth, and then, pushed me down. I fell flat on my face.
It hurt.
Badly.


For a few hours, I shouted at my computer screen, blabbering about how nothing was sacred, and how life was so unfair, and how stories.com sucked.
The computer monitor only stared back at me.

I had no money. My father would kill me if I asked him to get me an upgraded membership.

So there I was. Sad, lonely and confused.

One day later, I loaded stories.com and wished that somehow, magically, an error would occur on the stories.com website, and somehow, my account would get upgraded.


And then I glanced towards the left corner of the webpage, and it showed me that I had a new message. It was another review for an item.


The reviewer's name seemed comical, and purely out of boredom, I went to that author's portfolio.


I seemed to like the title of one of his poems, and read it. I liked it. so I gave it a rating of 4.5 stars, and a small review.


After sending the review, I realized that I actually liked reviewing the poem. So I went to the plug page.
And I reviewed every single one of the items posted there. I enjoyed it.


After sometime [that's actually after 2 weeks]
I realized that maybe not being upgraded isn't such a bad thing.


Because, as I'd filled up my portfolio with 15 items, there was no way I could write anymore.


So I read, and reviewed. And trust me, It's great to read what the members over here write. Some of the stuff is truly classic. And come to think of it, I never would've read all the stuff if I had been busy writing.


Of course, most of the reviews that I sent were replied, even the ones where I gave a less than pretty rating [that's 2.5 stars]

And the authors were truly interested in the suggestions I gave them on how I felt about a certain story or poem of theirs.

It's been almost two months on stories.com as a normal user now, and I've stopped writing anything altogether. This article in fact, is the only thing I'll be writing in a long long time.

But because I couldn't write anything new, I constantly edited and reedited what I'd already written. It's crazy how many mistakes I found in my stories. I never would've had the time to reedit them if I'd been an upgraded user writing new stories.

In all this time, I haven't seen one person on this site who's rash and ugly. Everyone on this site is here because of one reason. And that is the love of literature.

So to conclude this already long and boring article, here are a few things to do if you're an unfortunate soul like me:


1] Read.

2] Review what you read. Always.

3] Reedit your items.

4] Always, always respond to emails, and
reviews of your items. Even if it's just a
small thank you note with a smiley.

5] Don't be afraid. Nobody's gonna hurt you.

6] Have faith. If not in God, then at least in
yourself.


Finally, Stories.com is a great site. Originally, when I found out about the restrictions placed on a normal member, I was angry. But when I really thought about it, my problem was also the same one for the Story.com Webmasters. The problem was [is] money. Without it, how can they maintain such a lovely website?

And I truly agree with them for asking money to get an upgraded membership.

Don't feel that I'm patronizing. I felt the same anger that any normal user would feel back then.

But when I think about what stories.com gives me without any money, it's really baffling.
Let's see what we lost souls get:


1] Portfolio, with the added bonus of having
a URL like
www.stories.com/authors/whatever

2] Mailbox.

3] Spelling checker. [Invaluable!]

4] An online journal [just like a diary.]
         [Update: This feature has been removed for new writing.com members; but it was available when I joined.]

5] Permission to take part in all stories.com
contests
[except the ones in which the
contest judges have restricted the contest
to upgraded users only.]

6] Permission to participate in interactive
stories.

7] Feedback from other authors.

8] Most importantly, EXPOSURE.


And many more things that I may have forgotten.

We get all this for free. That is a lot.

So the next time you feel like thrashing the stories.com staff for not letting you add more items, or anything else, try to look at what they do give you:

They give you the privilege of being part of the best community in the world.





[ I'm not on the stories.com staff. If I was one of the staff, I'd have a premium membership.


So, this is not like Bill Gates talking about the latest version of the windows operating system.

I don't mean to give a bad image to stories.com in any way.

I don't mean to offend upgraded users.

I'm not writing this article expecting to win any favors [read : an upgraded membership] from the stories.com staff or authors.

Lastly, I'm just a newbie. So if I've committed a great sin by writing this article, I'm sure all you lovely people will forgive me ]


Thanks to TaintedFemale for the awardicon!