Beta Reading Jungle

Sometimes I think I'm ready to blow my top. I'm not a bad person and I'm not a particularly bad author, but sometimes I think I'm ready to blow my top. I was going to sit down for a healthy rant session here, but I think that would be a bad idea. Instead I'm going to explain a problem of mine.

I like COMPLETE CREATIVE CONTROL when I write something. To have my work hashed over by anyone drives me absolutely bonkers. I don't think that I'm the type of person who will ever get anything published, because I can't stand to have every dang sentence I write picked apart like it's a dead purple frog pinned to a gigantic hunk of wax. I know that this is something that every one who wants to be an author has to learn (how to take criticism), but for bloody sake, I get criticized on not wanting to be criticized.

The truth is that writing for me is a matter of personal expression. If I can't tell the story the way I want to tell it - EXACTLY - then I might as well not have written it. Naturally, my opinion changes and I learn what works better over time, but I have to be the one to learn it rather than the information being handed to me in the form of a ravaged, dissected, slippery, icky amphibian. This is why beta reading doesn't work for me very well. I'm too stupid and too stubborn to listen when someone has something intelligent to say. The problem is - I've been misled before. You see, I love my mother a great deal and she told me that if I wanted to be a good writer then I should read. This is an incredible mound of B.S. and I ate it up. This is SO untrue that it hurts my feelings even now (though I've long forgiven her for it). I've even learned that reading corrupts my inner voice and ruins my writing. A real author writes exactly from their heart and doesn't make patchwork quilts of other people's writing or ideas ... So, now I'm doubtful of every snippet of advice that is given to me.

Another problem is that people who want to write themselves volunteer to beta read for me. This doesn't work. They shouldn't waste their time on my work and should write themselves - ignoring whatever I'm doing. Maybe they think that it'll help them with their work. I think it shoves them into a box labeled 'Sapphirefly's Stuff' when they want to be in a box labeled 'My Stuff'.

You know, if I wasn't such an idiot, I wouldn't need a beta reader at all - not to offend my girl Kaytala. She rocks! And her contributions to my writing have always been the right blend of sugar and spice. But there's always someone on my back telling me that I'm doing something wrong and they want to beta read for me in order to clean it up. And the really weird thing is - they honestly believe they can help me. After long deliberation I learned that I cannot help anyone improve their writing. I don't know what made me so egotistical in the beginning for me to believe that I knew enough to give anyone tips. I was a MORON! [See? Isn't that a great paragraph? I start off saying I'm an idiot and finish off saying that I'm a moron. Way to tie things together!]

I guess what I want to say is that when Kaytala decides that she will no longer do projects for me. It's been a long time since I asked her since I haven't really been working on anything interesting. I'm so pathetically ill. But! When that day comes - I won't be getting a new beta reader. I'll swallow my errors and work harder to improve them on my own, but MERCY ME I've had it up to my earlobes with people telling me what to do. BACK OFF!

Opes! I ranted. Dang.