I'm not dead!
Mar. 10th, 2019 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kryptariaI've been going through a rough time: my PTSD, self-doubt, and anxiety are all feeding into each other, virtually guaranteeing that I haven't been able to write a damn thing lately. And by "lately" I mean "for the last century or so." At least, that's how it feels.
We talked a while back about what makes a good beta, and Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant (whose books are FANTASTIC and you should read them all right now) posted something that's very relevant:
https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/1104176615720869888
This exact same thing happened to me.
An editor at Sourcebooks Casablanca ended up reading a couple of my fics -- Northwest Passage and The Shattered Marque. She loved them and offered me a two-book contract to rewrite Northwest Passage as original het, with a sequel...
And then she went to a different publisher.
The editor who inherited me was a TERRIBLE fit. I never would've signed with her, and she never would've made me an offer. But she's apparently a great editor... for other writers.
It's the same thing with betas, especially when an author decides to branch out into a new fandom or style. Sometimes a beta who's great for, say, Supernatural angst will be terrible for Leverage crack. And that's okay.
I find myself in the position of having to tell someone who's probably a great beta that they're just not a good fit for one of the stories I'm writing, and it's really, really awkward. But Seanan McGuire's thread is what opened my eyes to that realization, so credit to her for maybe, just maybe, helping me take the first step of remember that my writing doesn't actually suck after all...
How are you all doing?
We talked a while back about what makes a good beta, and Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant (whose books are FANTASTIC and you should read them all right now) posted something that's very relevant:
https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/1104176615720869888
This exact same thing happened to me.
An editor at Sourcebooks Casablanca ended up reading a couple of my fics -- Northwest Passage and The Shattered Marque. She loved them and offered me a two-book contract to rewrite Northwest Passage as original het, with a sequel...
And then she went to a different publisher.
The editor who inherited me was a TERRIBLE fit. I never would've signed with her, and she never would've made me an offer. But she's apparently a great editor... for other writers.
It's the same thing with betas, especially when an author decides to branch out into a new fandom or style. Sometimes a beta who's great for, say, Supernatural angst will be terrible for Leverage crack. And that's okay.
I find myself in the position of having to tell someone who's probably a great beta that they're just not a good fit for one of the stories I'm writing, and it's really, really awkward. But Seanan McGuire's thread is what opened my eyes to that realization, so credit to her for maybe, just maybe, helping me take the first step of remember that my writing doesn't actually suck after all...
How are you all doing?
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Date: 2019-03-14 04:58 pm (UTC)