Plzd to Meet You, I'm Stretch Armstrong Chi...
Growing as an author is not something I'm ever comfortable with... I'm one of those folks that goes through a growth spurt, and then my brain shuts down, unavoidably, for about a week. Over the past year, I've grown a lot. I finished Leaven of Malice, and I've done massive edits it on it for the past year and a half. I wrote my first series of smut fics. I am writing Evolution of Rose, which, not to toot my own horn, is quite honestly the best thing I've written. (I don't think that's bragging, right? It's just being honest.)
Here's the thing. I feel like my abilities are growing -- stretching to feel all the nooks and crannies and holes of what I couldn't do before. But like anything where there's growth, there's also pain and frustration.
My Dad tells this story. He was a Marine Corps Reservist and went to boot camp in San Diego, and part of the process of beginning boot camp was getting immunizations. So they took everyone to this long room, and there were nurses lined up with needle guns from one end of the room to the other. And they would shoot these vaccinations into the soldiers and you couldn't flinch even an inch or you'd bleed.
That's what an authorial growth spurt with really good editors is like. It's painful, but it's a good kind of pain. It's a healthy kind of pain.
I'm extremely blessed with the people that I know. katmorning was forced volunteered to edit Leaven of Malice for me and we've both poured blood, sweat and tears into the story. papilio_luna took on Evolution of Rose with an open mind and a brilliant flair. I couldn't be more thrilled with the editors that I've had over the years. I've not yet had a long-term editor that didn't mold me into something better. With All My Love is a fic I would lay directly at the feet of tartanboxers, for instance. It doesn't read like I was all of 17 when I wrote it, and you can thank her for that.
That's the brilliant part of being surrounded by brilliant people. They can somehow sense, I think, that you're on the verge of something better, and they push you there, sometimes kicking and screaming. I don't get any quarter from my editors.
Thank God.
So anyway. This is a love letter to everyone who has helped me. katmorning just finished Leaven of Malice... and if I ever get it published, she is the one I will lay all of the credit at the feet of. She hung around while Rafe, Carmen, Jossie, Abby, Gideon, Jake, Giacomo and Alvaro took shape. She refused to let me get lazy. She refused to let this be anything other than a story that couldn't easily be dismissed as another poor attempt to do something better than Twilight.
Three cheers to gbtso, for being the Queen of Smut when my brain is stuck. She can pick around your brain with a stick until you find exactly what you need.
editrx, despite being extremely busy with, you know, being a real publishing industry employee, somehow finds time once a week or so to chew the fat with me about Evolution of Rose and her edits of the latest chapter mean that I might be taking that Evolution in a different direction than we initially planned, but... nothing about this fic has gone as planned.
papilio_luna, if it weren't too late to nominate you for beta of the year... I'm totally going to nominate you next year. You've demanded excellence, every step of the way. You got the project from the beginning and held my hand when it wasn't nearly as popular as it is now.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm getting better, and it's thanks to you amazing women. I can feel myself getting better. My writing legs ache in that way I remember from being 8 years old, you know? I'm a little stalled on actually writing right now... but that means my brain is just trying to catch up to what my subconscious wants to do... I really believe that. It's like shinoutime says to me when we're both blocked: We're waiting for our abilities to catch up to our concepts.
You know what I think we need? Fandom-wide Beta Appreciation Day. This would be a good project. *Nod nod*
Here's the thing. I feel like my abilities are growing -- stretching to feel all the nooks and crannies and holes of what I couldn't do before. But like anything where there's growth, there's also pain and frustration.
My Dad tells this story. He was a Marine Corps Reservist and went to boot camp in San Diego, and part of the process of beginning boot camp was getting immunizations. So they took everyone to this long room, and there were nurses lined up with needle guns from one end of the room to the other. And they would shoot these vaccinations into the soldiers and you couldn't flinch even an inch or you'd bleed.
That's what an authorial growth spurt with really good editors is like. It's painful, but it's a good kind of pain. It's a healthy kind of pain.
I'm extremely blessed with the people that I know. katmorning was forced volunteered to edit Leaven of Malice for me and we've both poured blood, sweat and tears into the story. papilio_luna took on Evolution of Rose with an open mind and a brilliant flair. I couldn't be more thrilled with the editors that I've had over the years. I've not yet had a long-term editor that didn't mold me into something better. With All My Love is a fic I would lay directly at the feet of tartanboxers, for instance. It doesn't read like I was all of 17 when I wrote it, and you can thank her for that.
That's the brilliant part of being surrounded by brilliant people. They can somehow sense, I think, that you're on the verge of something better, and they push you there, sometimes kicking and screaming. I don't get any quarter from my editors.
Thank God.
So anyway. This is a love letter to everyone who has helped me. katmorning just finished Leaven of Malice... and if I ever get it published, she is the one I will lay all of the credit at the feet of. She hung around while Rafe, Carmen, Jossie, Abby, Gideon, Jake, Giacomo and Alvaro took shape. She refused to let me get lazy. She refused to let this be anything other than a story that couldn't easily be dismissed as another poor attempt to do something better than Twilight.
Three cheers to gbtso, for being the Queen of Smut when my brain is stuck. She can pick around your brain with a stick until you find exactly what you need.
editrx, despite being extremely busy with, you know, being a real publishing industry employee, somehow finds time once a week or so to chew the fat with me about Evolution of Rose and her edits of the latest chapter mean that I might be taking that Evolution in a different direction than we initially planned, but... nothing about this fic has gone as planned.
papilio_luna, if it weren't too late to nominate you for beta of the year... I'm totally going to nominate you next year. You've demanded excellence, every step of the way. You got the project from the beginning and held my hand when it wasn't nearly as popular as it is now.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm getting better, and it's thanks to you amazing women. I can feel myself getting better. My writing legs ache in that way I remember from being 8 years old, you know? I'm a little stalled on actually writing right now... but that means my brain is just trying to catch up to what my subconscious wants to do... I really believe that. It's like shinoutime says to me when we're both blocked: We're waiting for our abilities to catch up to our concepts.
You know what I think we need? Fandom-wide Beta Appreciation Day. This would be a good project. *Nod nod*