I can definitely understand being anxious about leaving comments. When I started more consistently commenting chapter by chapter on completed works (instead of just at the end) I got a bit worried that I'd annoy authors by flooding their inboxes, but since then I've had plenty of authors tell me they loved seeing my thoughts and reactions as I read through. And similarly I got a bit nervous when I first started doing more "live react" style comments w/ lots of block quotes but so far responses have been positive. It definitely helps that I've been leaving comments for pretty much as long as I've been reading. So I've had well over 20 years of authors responding positively to my comments to help get my anxiety to shut up. (And for many years I had some standard comment formulas I'd fall back on if I was tired or having trouble thinking of anything specific.)
Writing the comment elsewhere is definitely a game changer for being able to comment as you go. I know some folks use fancy extensions, but swapping back and forth between the notes app and the browser tab works well enough for me.
Ellipsis
OTW Communications & Tag Wrangling Committees
Comment on Five Things Ellipsis Said
OTW_Communications (Official) Sat 13 Jun 2026 11:57PM UTC
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