~~reena does the happy-beta dance.

[reenka]

now... this might be shocking...even offensive...

but i had to share my joy.

i..... i...... *dies*
i got my first betaed story...!

i submitted `charming' to the sugar quill (this is the offensive part), yes, because i'm a review slut, yes. and you know, they have this whole "you get a beta if you submit" deal... and....and... *cries again*

betas are god's gift to good little girls...! (like me).

she sent me back my story with corrections in red. i'm overwhelmed with joy. you may think it's silly, but i've never had a beta before...! except my english teachers, and that's just not the same.

i mean. grammar & sentence-structure mistakes (i can catch spelling stuff ok) are... a bother. i want to cry. this is beautiful. I WANT A BETA. *wails*

oh. to never have to spend the next week after finishing a story, weeding out typos. i don't use Word. i use notepad. *cries* i don't have Word and i don't want it. so. i mean. you can imagine. yes, i type fast. yes, typoland here i come. it's so beautiful...! the land of clear writing & plot advice beckons me, and lo, it is the gods' own land. *sigh* i'm picky. i don't want a beta unless they're better at grammar/clarity/plot-hole-spotting than me. and they have to sort of, see where i'm going, with my stuff, which doesn't happen all that much. but. i'll settle for sentence-structure and grammar trouble-shooting and... *cries* cute comments & giggling at my jokes.

yes, i'd rather have a beta than a SO, right now.
~~
penelope_z amazes me. i live & i die for metaphor, i do.
``As gravity expires he can fly again, skeletal angel with chicken bone wings"
...
or perhaps that should be, live & swoon. metaphors own my soul.
i'm still struggling with the fact that i dig stories that disturb me, i am.

i used to read a lot of dark!duo and dark!heero stories, in the gundam wing fandom.
it didn't bother me. crack-addict-raverboi!duo? right on, been there, done that. ruthless-killer-with-no-heart!heero? every third story. it's just....
    i don't want the potterverse to be all that similar to the gundam wing universes. in fact, in gundam wing, i liked AUs, with no war, and just the two boys and their issues. or, a war, but no gundams. i'm weird i guess.
normal existence as a 15/16-year-old is plenty angst and horror enough, lemme tell ya. you don't need drug addiction to be a complete basketcase, when you're a teenager and onwards, too. you don't need a war for your life to be in the balance every day.

you don't need death to be dying.

and that's the saddest thing of all, isn't it? the death and the war and the "evil" and "addiction" and "lust-mania" or whatever-- it's there all the time. you don't need to dwell on it that much, to have it pervade everything. i don't write dark stories, but i write stories with darkness in them. everything has darkness in it. everything is messed up. everyone bleeds, all the damn time. actual blood and death is overkill. yah, that's the sad part.

Comments

[penelope-z.livejournal.com]

Thanks, honey *waggles eyebrows*

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*grins* word really gets around in here~:) this would probably be bad, if i had something to hide-- as it is, i will refrain from a) fangirling you even further; b) saying ``it's on the house, sugar" though that'd be kinda amusing -.-

~:)

[ishuca.livejournal.com]

oh god. just read it.

i've always loved her stuff, but... it's been a while. and i will not give into a fangirl urge.

and wait. you don't have a beta? i never would have guessed.

but... if you need one i'd be more than willing. erm, delighted. would you like some credentials? regret (http://www.livejournal.com/~dark_soul_lost) could tell you about my fondness for marking things up...

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*laughs and runs around squealing in delight*

you want to beta my stuff??!

*incoherent noises*
....
ahem.

....YES...! that would be wonderful :D
hee. and it's easy enough to guess, since like, i never do get all of the typos, it seems ^_^;;
then there's the confusing sentence-structures and the plot-holes and ...yah it's a nice stew~:)

and yeah. i try not to think of how like, everyone knocks my socks off, or i'd just hide & read & not write~:) you know what's shocking?? why are there this many brilliant writers doing fanfic and so few brilliant writers being published??! *laughs* but it's ok, stories like this (http://fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=798255) make me think that maybe i'm just not reading enough badfic and am just inflicting too much goodfic upon myself~:)
hee :>

~reena

[ishuca.livejournal.com]

you want to beta my stuff??!

:blinks:

of course!

and i feel an ego boost coming on. ;)

so yay! i'm your beta! ok, how do you want to do this? the way i tend to do it with my beta is we've set up private lj lines where we can post and edit in peace. that way, if you want more than one beta :wink wink: we can have conversations and stuff.

and i think that one of the reasons most published writers are dreck is because they're writing what the publishers are looking for. talent alone doesn't do it. the timing, story, and everything else has to be right. and then you have established authors that start pushing out crap, but still get published because they're names. it's really too bad.

yay! i just became a beta!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

private lj-lines? what are those? i know you can post things "for friends-only" but i have like, 28 friends now. *sweatdrops*
i wonder why. heh. v.v. few of them ever say anything.
on the other hand i never say anything to most of -my- friends-list people either, but then, i like to watch. fic-updates that is ><;;

erm. yah emailing back-and-forth is... the obvious way but i haven't had luck with people emailing me back in any normal amount of time (er. it's been a month or two, for the first couple people who'd said "ok, i'll do it". sort of like my roommate curse. as soon as they say yes, i just count the days until they find a "friend" they'd rather move in with.)

guh.
oh. the glory. could it be, that my days of beta-jealousy are over??! *overwhelmed sigh* :>

i loff your chibi-harry icon. looks more like chinese-noodle-shop-boy!harry. but oh well~:)

*misses her anime*
*wails*
*remembers her anime club is watching scryed this saturday and smiles*
heh. ah, anime. who needs drugs when you have chibi world-destroying mechas?

~:) i actually am... lazy about revising. as in, i usually don't. but i should, obviously, so. i'm amazed that the fanfic writers are so english-class diligent about it, too.
i mean, it's not exactly the fun part, is it ^_^;
but i guess i do care about making my stuff be the best it can be, so that i get more reviews, glory, adoration, and fortune and all that~:) hee.

[ishuca.livejournal.com]

oh, just friends lines. erm, we get thirty, so you might still be fine.

gah, i know. s'why i tend to keep private lines for my college friends. i love to watch out for fic updates and don't want the two mixed up. although i am currently getting a couple of them into potter fanfiction :rubs hands together:

beta jealousy. :rolls: so funny... now if only my *other* beta would finish the damn series. canon, i mean. mer. i decided to have one beta who knows *everything* about my plot, and one who knows nothing. that way i have a control for obviously ooc moments. however, one is currently still not finished. :growls:

i bought the dj last saturday and was enchanted by his doofiness. it had to be scanned. :)

you know, i'm *living* over here and i haven't seen anime in months. no desire to anymore. funny, that.

heh. i think i depends on the author. i revise everything i write because i'm anal-retentive to the max. there are times when i sit for up to an hour considering the placement of words. :sighs:

it's all in the personal style. anyway, see if you have any friends lines left to use. i certianly do, and since andi just hopped on i'm sure that she does as well.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

heh... you actually thought i had 28 friends-lines with `friends' who actually communicated with me on some sort of constant basis. heh. what i meant was, i didn't even know those things existed. but since i'm a resourceful little computer-user, i looked it up in the faq ^_^;; i had noticed that in the downloadable lj client you can do "filters" that later show up when you add a new friend, but um. i never knew what to do with them. should've guessed that there was -something- you could do, but.... i mean, i was sort of assuming there wasn't anything and/or it wasn't worth the bother of finding out. so i sorted things and then went... eh. well it's "sorted" now. yes i surprise even myself with my absent-minded little quirks of logic sometimes.

i meant i have 28 -friends- as in, if i post friends-only i'd get 28 people who could read it :> not that i care, but eh~:)
i actually wouldn't care who read what, with my journal, since only one person irl knows about it (and i'm honest with him, as far as wanting to watch h/d get it on, anyway-- then again, who wouldn't i tell that-- even my mother knows, plus my ex, plus anyone else who'll listen-- i like squicking people and seeing if they'll not talk to me anymore 'cause they're such idiots, what can i say, heh.) And, i have no real relationships online anymore. and it's a bloody good thing. goddamn, does it suck caring about people you never see and rarely if ever talk to, who can lose internet access and disappear on you anytime. guh. *bitter*

so. off to read this (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=102) wondrous introduction to the world of customizing my friends. explains why a lot of people don't comment in here even though they added me. *jaded cackles*

i bet like, 80% of 'em never even read me at all ><;;
hey, it's better than being bloody boring, isn't it :D

[ishuca.livejournal.com]

:huggles:

*i* read your stuff, even if i don't always respond. you generally tend to put out some interesting posts. ;)

wow. you've told your parents about your h/d obsession. i'm not about to, since that 'joys of the penis' conversation i was subjected to when i was outed to them. me: um, but i'm bi. dad: and once you experience blah blah blah blah. me:....

it just would not be wise.

And, i have no real relationships online anymore. and it's a bloody good thing. goddamn, does it suck caring about people you never see and rarely if ever talk to, who can lose internet access and disappear on you anytime. guh. *bitter*

yes, it does suck. although i do have to say that if you're not careful a very similar thing can happen after college. i have lost someone who used to be one of my best friends simply because she couldn't be bothered. :sighs:

oh, well. anyway, about the private line- do you want andi and i to be able to see each other's edits, or no? there are pluses and minuses to both options. once you've decided, tell us so that we cna set up friends line(s). =^-^=

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

well i did it (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reenka/friends/betas).... i -think- i did, anyway....
i made a friends group with you and andi-- it seemed a bit ...complicated thinking of the implications of posting things twice and stuff...

if there's something else to a friends line besides the whole group-making and then posting with that group as the security setting.... i guess you can tell me ^.^

oh and, do you think this (http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~lorien/story/_hp_ginny.txt) is going anywhere? *sigh* it's that horrible evil draco/ginny i had to write to battle The Demon of Prejudiced Shippiness, and stuff.

coherency wobbling... should probably stop listening to `mad world' on repeat...yes...

~reena

[andi-sunrider.livejournal.com]

I second Ishuca, dude.... I've barely bet-ed, but I'm a uni enlgish major.... (ok, so I'm in first year, but I got 92 and 94% in Engl. Lit and English, so I i know my gramatical shit....) And I love your stuff. Loff it! Reading your livejournal is crazy; you actually have ideas and things that you express.... Now I'm fangirling you. Odd, eh? NOw I just need to get my own minions....

[andi-sunrider.livejournal.com]

but please don't judge my actual ability on the previous post... how on earth did I manage to typo "English?"

[ishuca.livejournal.com]

:rolls:

*i* believe you. you wouldn't believe what i can do to the word 'you'...

~i

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

the more the merrier~:)
i mean. at least it means you'll actually -read- my stories :D
and say something beyond. "yo. cool."

although, you know, that's nice.
i don't really know how people "do it", but.
um. i usually post first drafts staight to a) this journal b) ff.net or c) i can do something else if i figure out what~:)

today, my beta, tomorrow, the wooorld...!
plus. i'll be your minion if you'll be my minion ><;;
i'm nice like that :D