DancesWithWerewolves wrote:Dream wrote:PS- I miss coming around and bullshitting with everyone. I've been working with my therapist on getting over my hangups about showing people my writing and actually reaching out to attempt to find some beta readers for my better pieces.
I've been a bit consumed by my own brain lately. Hope all of you are well.
Cool. My only issue with beta readers now is having them finish in a timely manner. Some have had my first book for over a year now
Which in the mean time I've written two more.
My issue has been settling on a version to send them. I want it to be my idea of perfect before I send it, but I'm never going to make it perfect and I know it so I need to make an edit and commit to that edit going out for review.
I'm not really
DancesWithWerewolves wrote:Ava wrote:Dream wrote:PS- I miss coming around and bullshitting with everyone. I've been working with my therapist on getting over my hangups about showing people my writing and actually reaching out to attempt to find some beta readers for my better pieces.
I've been a bit consumed by my own brain lately. Hope all of you are well.
You are missed!
I always liked reading your work stories and what you made the littles in your family.
Is the Beta thing anonymous (as in they don't know who you are) or is it online readers that you know who they are and they know who you are? (good gosh that sounds confusing)
It could be anonymous I suppose. They can be strangers, friends (
but make sure if they are friends or even family that they are discerning and won't be like a mom and constantly go "that's so good honey!").
One thing I found some beta readers don't understand is that THEY ARE NOT EDITORS.
Yeah, that's why I haven't offered to read friends' stuff or send my stuff to friends. I don't trust them to be brutally honest with me and I need that to get better. I also don't trust myself to be brutally honest with them because what experience do I have to go on to tell them I think something doesn't work?
One of the main things Mark has pointed out to me in my writing is that he thinks I'm expecting too much from my readers in a few of my stories. I don't connect things up for them in a neat little package, I just put the elements in there and hope they can figure out the connections on their own. The connections aren't really necessary to the story overall, they just add a little depth to the story if you do figure them out.