BRAW

[kelly_chambliss]

I'm hereby declaring October 9-15 to be Beta Reader Appreciation WEEK, so that I don't have to be late in posting.  (Of course, this change gives us a rather odd acronym, but it can't be helped.)

Anyway, my partner is my usual beta reader, and I appreciate her in many ways, not all of which need to be described in LJ.

But I would also like to express my appreciation for several fanficcers who are not my beta readers, but whose support and friendship sustain me as a writer and as a person.  They are. . .

Seema

Rocky

Alex Voy

Julie Russo

Abbey

august (from whom I haven't heard in a while, but who was one of the first people in Trek fandom to encourage me and who did me the inestimable service of offering to host my stories on her webpage, the incomparable "Archipelago of Angst."  By great good luck, that site was among the Trekfic sites I came across.  I've been aspiring to its high writing standards ever since.)

monkee (Mary Wiecek)

 

Thank you all!! 

Comments

[aabbey.livejournal.com]

First, I agree with Alex. It must be great to have someone close to you who appreciates writing and who gets fandom. I know it always killed me back home when family members looked down at or even actively discouraged my fannish writing. (You've heard about my embarrassing moment when Mom discovered my first J/Picard, right?) It aint much better currently, but an upperclassman in my creative writing forum is a boyslashing LOTR fangirl. When she found out I slash, albeit femmishly, it was a happy day indeed. We freak out the "normal" group writers with discussions about "Mary Sue" and "PWP."

Secondly, I appreciate very much that you consider my writings/Janeway ramblings worthy of mention. I feel like I've improved a lot recently, and I ascribe that to my beta and folks like you helping with the constructive crit.

I've got a Janeway piece in the works now that is sort of a "mythology" piece--lots of backstory, even addressing the whole oft-neglected Justin, early officership mess. It's been fun to get out some of my current frustrations on it, but it lacks focus. I'll be posting it up when it's done, though, which shouldn't be too long.

[kellychambliss.livejournal.com]

I'll look forward to the new piece, Abbey. Didn't you also post something relatively recently (last couple of months or so)? I remember making a note to myself to read it, but then never did. But I'll scroll back through the old posts to find it.

I'm so glad you found a fangirl classmate. There's just nothing like discussing fanfic with someone who totally gets it. As you learned with your family, an awful lot of people do NOT. I once had a student who wrote "Malcolm in the Middle" fic. I forget how it came up, but when she learned that I knew what fanfic was *and* even liked it, she was thrilled. At Homecoming, she dragged her mother over to me, saying, "Mom -- here's my teacher who knows all about fanfic! See, I *told* you it wasn't weird." The look her mom gave me suggested she not only thought fanfic *was* weird, but she was pretty sure I was, too.

I keep the whole fannish thing a deep, dark secret from my family. Old as I am, I think my mom would react to my fanfic about the same way yours did.

[aabbey.livejournal.com]

I've been fairly active on the writing front. I wrote a fairly short J/T just before my summer, which was set between "Extreme Risk" and "Nothing Human." Don't know if you've seen that--Alex saw it and didn't like the more depressive aspects. *g* I consider it a good reflection of my mood at the time.

Then, during the second week of basic I had a foreign language briefing, during which I experienced a sudden (and unusual for me) J/7 craving, and drafted out a little something on my little issued memo pad while sitting in the auditorium while being subjected to bad Russian pop. I wrote it out on letterhead later, thus worrying the roomie. Now it's posted.

Everything is here: angelfire.com/trek/abbey

Have you ever taught a VOY fangirl? Because that would be so cool. I had a teacher who for creative writing let me do fic. It was pure heaven. And she didn't even get Star Trek.