Great job on this one everyone!

Good question…and I don’t think there’s a good answer except….it’s the way it is so that the world can work. Do you buy it?

See, wasn’t that easy?

More thoughts on beta readers: They don’t need to be fiction writers. My favorite beta readers are publishing poets. Good command of the language, and when they send me something to critique, it doesn’t take me all year.

> Too bad, since our Top Five Vomiting Stories had so much potential.

Oh, too bad. I loves me a good vomiting story. :)

I’ve just about convinced myself to make that the topic of conversation in tomorrow’s episode. Too bad, since our Top Five Vomiting Stories had so much potential.

Rish

The first fantasy I ever sold was a story I workshopped through Critters. It was well-received, but they felt it needed more exposition, explanation, clarification, etc. By the time I’d fixed it to their satisfaction, it was about a thousand words longer. I started submitting it. Reject, reject, reject. Finally, one editor was nice enough to say, “This has its moments, but it’s about a thousand words too long.” *bing!* I humbly asked whether he’d be willing to look at a shorter version. He said yes, but no promises. I stripped out everything I’d added for the writers’ group. I only kept one sentence of their material. I sent it back to him. He bought it. I did not return to Critters.

The problem, of course, is not them; it’s me. I tend to assume all criticism is valid, and I seek to please the person who seems to like my work least – my shrillest critic. I’m not good at deciding which criticism to keep and which to ignore, realizing who is part of my target audience and who isn’t. I learned more from reading other people’s work than I did from submitting my own. Same goes for reading slush for magazines and zines. You quickly learn what works and what doesn’t, and you learn what your competition looks like in that editors’ inbox.

For my own work, I now like to use a dozen or so beta readers who aren’t talking to each other. If more than one of them says something is a problem, I know that it is. I’m talking about major issues, not grammar and spelling. I’ve done huge rewrites just to please one reader – big mistake. If you have trouble finding good beta readers, writers’ groups can be a place to hook up. There are definitely some good ones out there, and some regularly publishing people thrive on them.

_On Writing_ is the only writing book I’ve ever recommended to anyone. “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” Also, it’s funny.

Also: Rish, should you be in Portland (or wherever I am, as I do dart about the country, though not usually to Utah) and I am still single and you ask me out to coffee or dinner, I would say yes. It would be a completely risk-free, non-scary, unintimidating event. You talk about your lack of dates at least as often as your lack of publication. Hey, I know! You could have some sort of one date and one submission per week goal! And report on them! That would be fun! …until you married the fourth one out, and then you’d lose your shtick. Oh, well. Still fun.