Yes, I is still alive! XD Figured I'd reassure several people who've added me lately that this journal is not, in fact, dead. It's just been on a sort of ... unscheduled hiatus, heh. A combination of writer's block, real life circumstances and just general apathy have conspired to bring my fic production down to almost zero, and since the BSG finale I haven't really had other reasons to post here. I've been updating my "real life" journal quite a bit, but the unfortunate consequence of having lots of real life stuff to talk about is that fandom gets pushed to the side.

Deviating just momentarily into the real life side of things, overall this has been a pretty crappy summer for me. Earlier in June I had to have some surgery, which although minor, certainly sapped a lot of my energy and left me feeling very un-creative. As if that weren't enough, one of my cats became very sick, and I eventually had to make the difficult decision to have him put to sleep. At times like that, fandom can be a refuge, and I continued to run my stillness communities and do the fandom newsletters. But I couldn't write, and I didn't read much fic, either.

Things are better now, so don't worry. I've started reading fic again, I've started writing again, and I'm thinking about various bits of meta floating around in my head that I'd like to post here. There's also the fic from the drabble request meme, which I promise I will get done, and there's my poor fic claims and my even poorer writing schedule, which got pretty much shot to hell over the past month. I'll have to rework it, but all in good time.

I have a finished Kara/Sam fic that I'm planning to post right after this, and several other ideas floating around in my head. There's TIS, too, and there's my list of fic bookmarks that I need to plow through and review. I'll also get to those!

Meanwhile, I saw this little survey/questionnaire on the blog of a person I always read, but don't actually have friended. Being too chicken to de-lurk and fill it out in the comments section of her journal (yeah, I know, I know), I decided to bring it over here. So, the Beta Reader Survey, with wisteria_'s copyright:



1. Do you primarily use them for brainstorming or editing?
A little from column A, a little from column B, as it were. I come up with most of my own ideas, although Katie occasionally IMs me with, "OMG I just had the best idea and since I suck at writing [which she totally doesn't, by the way], here, you do it!" I often do, simply because she'll drive me nuts if I don't. XD Usually, though, when I have an idea I think would be worth turning into a fic, I get on the interweb horn and talk to her about it. She helps me refine it, tells me what will and won't work, and if it's a longfic, Katie helps me outline the plot. She's the only person, aside from me, who has the full outline of To Ignite the Stars (beginning to end). It's saved to her computer, and whenever I have a question or we're wondering whether something would work, we check our outlines and compare. She also edits through the writing of every one of my fics.

2. How often do you send drafts? (as you write, or the finished version)
As I write. I used to send her drafts once the fic was finished, but sometimes we'd find major issues and I'd basically end up having to rewrite the entire thing. So I started sending her passages as I write, sometimes even just individual paragraphs, along with my idea of where I see the piece going. That way if Katie finds something that doesn't work, we can fix it before I have to change the whole fic. Plus, my early drafts are often chock-full of spelling issues, grammar problems and word reversals, so it helps to have that all fixed up too.

3. What do you value most in a beta reader?
Katie is also my best friend - we've known each other since I was eight and she six! - so sometimes it's hard for me to separate our relationship as best friends and as beta reader and writer. ;) However, I do know that one thing that would drive me absolutely crazy in a beta (and which, thankfully, Katie doesn't do) is them rewriting my stuff so that it no longer sounded like me, and instead sounded like them. Katie and I do a fair bit of rewriting, but somehow she is always able to toe the line between polishing up my garbled words so that they make something resembling sense, and yet keeping the style and tone uniquely mine. So I guess that's definitely one of the foremost qualities I value - the ability to edit and make suggestions while preserving the writer's specific voice.

4. Do you prefer someone within your fandom and/or pairing, or someone with a more distanced POV?
I think having someone within the fandom is essential. The pairing doesn't matter as much, so long as the person is able to be objective and not critique the piece based solely on the fact that s/he doesn't like the particular pairing involved. But if you don't share the fandom, then you can't make comments on possible plot holes, whether the characters are in-character, etc. I suppose it would give you objectivity, but any advantages that provided would be negated by the other issues I mentioned. Katie and I have different fandoms, but the two major ones in which I write - Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica - we share. We ship different pairings in each, though. She loves Obi-Wan/Padmé and Han/Leia, to the exclusion of all other pairings. Obidala is my OTP as well, but I love Anakin/Padmé and Anakin/Obi-Wan too. She and I both share Lee/Kara as an OTP where BSG is concerned, but I go just as nuts over Sam/Kara and she goes just as nuts over Adama/Roslin and Helo/Kara. None of that matters to us, though, because we just don't think that arguing over which pairing is superior is really worth our time.

5. Any particularly memorable editing experiences? :)
Not exactly an editing experience, per se, but I will never forget the two days we spent outlining To Ignite the Stars, about a year ago now. That outline has changed and evolved many times since then, but at the time we spent six to eight hours, per day, just talking over the plot and basically rewriting the entire Star Wars saga from an Obidala perspective. She was pregnant at the time and had been put on bed rest, so it was a great distraction for her to just be on AIM putting together a fic outline with her best friend from 3,000 miles away. We don't do marathon sessions like that much anymore, since I'm a lot busier than I used to be and she has my two active goddaughters to run after. XD Still, it's a time I don't think I'll ever quite forget.



Speaking of beta-ing ... off to beta and post some fic now. :)