You know what never ceases to amaze me? The reaction I have to feedback from my beta readers. I’ve written eight books now; one is currently in the post beta stage. The feedback is trickling in and even though I know what they are telling me are fair points it still elicits the same response in me.
I know my beta readers, some better than others, but I know they all have my best interest at heart. I know their feedback is meant to help me and is never a personal attack. I know this, my brain knows this. But my dang heart takes it all so personally.

Like I said some feedback has made its way to me and so far from what I have read they’re all making valid and valuable points. I understand where they are coming from and some of their concerns were actually my concerns as well. But it still hurts.

I find my reactions fascinating and humorous at the same time. I have three stages of my reactions to beta feedback. I joke about it often.

First: Anger, if it’s a comment that goes against what I have written, if it doesn’t tell me how brilliant I am I get angry. I feel my face get hot, and the irrational angry thoughts come to my mind. I have an insatiable need to explain why my version is better and it requires no improvements.

Second: Sadness, Oh the tears, so many tears. Why does everybody hate my work? I’m useless, my work is useless, I can’t write to save my own life. I should just quit right here right now.

Third: Acceptance, Ah yes, I see what you are saying. I agree I should have put something in this spot or that. I need to describe this better or take that out completely.

It is not until I reach this third stage that I can actually start any revisions. I never contact any of my betas when I’m in those first two stages, well except for one and she just smiles and basically tells me to breathe through it. (She’s awesome that way) But the others are spared my insanity and I keep a distance until I’m actually in the right frame of mind for proper editing.

I find it interesting that I react that way, every time. When I think about who I was when I wrote my first book it makes sense that I would react in that manner. But you would think after six years and eight books I would have a better grip on myself.

I wonder if that’s arrogance? My need for people to love my work, warts and all. Or is it lack of self-confidence? My personal belief that I don’t have what it takes –imposter syndrome- I don’t know.
What I do know is that I cherish each and every one of my betas. I do my best to see their thoughts and notes through their eyes. Understand what they felt worked and didn’t work and why. Their honesty will make me a better writer; it will show me my weaknesses and help me improve.

I will forever protect them from my irrational anger and pitiful tears. I promise I will tell them how much they mean to me and acknowledge their involvement in my creative process. But I fear they will never fully know how much I cherish them.

Thank you my beautiful betas for your precious time, I hope I do you justice in my future edits.
 
I must return to my notes now, I am entering stage two and I believe my box of tissues is empty.

July has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Both personally and professionally. It wasn’t until this month that I fully realized how much those two things are very much the same to a writer. With the emotional turmoil I started the month in it affected my writing greatly. I couldn’t focus on anything longer than a few sentences.

I find myself distracted today. I didn’t have any topic decided on, but I normally don’t, so this post would have been no different. But you see I’ve been given some news, news that has completely occupied my mind. No matter how hard I try to shake it, try to distract from it, it continues to come back to me.

It’s the first week of June and I’ve realized I haven’t done a blog post for May! I apologize since I promised monthly ramblings. So you will be getting two posts this month, ain’t ya the lucky ones!
I spent a lot of years wandering from one job to another never enjoying any of them. The age old question "What do you want to do when you grow up?" was always a conundrum to me. I thought I knew. When I was much younger I wrote in journals telling stories for a short time. I bounced to art and enjoyed painting, but then theater came along and I thought I found my calling.

I went to a conference in February for writing, I won’t bore you with all the minor details of it but there was an author/publisher there, Dean Wesley Smith. He did a lecture on what he calls “Writing into the Dark”. It’s what most people call pantser writing, someone who does not create an outline. Anyway not my point here.

He says there are two brains, the creative brain and the critical brain. For an author the creative brain is obvious and the critical brain is the editor in us. Well he says the creative brain is like a two year old. They do what they want when they want and don’t care what people think. So the best thing to do is just let the two year old run around.

Sometimes the hardest thing in life is patience. You thought I was going to say something else didn't you? Like love or where to put a comma. But no, no I think that patience is the hardest thing, for me it is anyway.

We live in a world where everything is at our fingertips. Instant gratification is the norm and the expected, so when we are told that we have to wait for something we get very impatient.

Life is full of ups and downs, successes and failures, love and loss. We’ve all heard this at one point in our lives, a bit cliché but still so very true. Today I am going to talk about a number of my personal failures that led to an enormous personal success.
Back in 2011 my Husband and I were in Disney World (My favorite place, my mothership if you will). While there we were shopping in Downtown Disney, now Disney Springs. I was standing in front of a clothing rack in the Disney sports store and was admiring all the tech shirts they had. It was now November and nearly all the Disney races were completed for the year. The shirts I was staring at were from the races of that year.
They had pictures of different characters, depending on the race shirt. So Mickey Mouse was the full marathon, Donald was the half, Goofy was both, and Pluto was the 5km. They said things like, I just completed my first Disney Marathon, or Half Marathon 2011.
I so desperately wanted one of those shirts, I ached to have one. Hubby approached me as I was coveting these beauties and plainly stated “if you want one, buy one.”
It was a simple statement and it couldn’t have been easier for me to just pull it off the rack and buy it. Nobody would know whether I ran one of those races or not. I thought about it for a brief two seconds and said, “no, I want to earn it.”

Here it is my first post to my new website. My inaugural entry of my monthly ramblings. Actually this is technically my second blog post. A few years ago I guest posted on a site called the Fictorians. It’s a good site with interesting blogs by authors from all different genres.

It was a good post I think. I spoke about what it’s like to receive criticism and how to handle it. I’ll share it here in the next few entries.
Today I thought I would talk a little about what I’m currently working on. It’s a project that I first had a difficult time writing, I wasn’t sure if I could even start the book let alone finish a series of four books.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself, so let’s go back a bit. I was still working on the Guardians series, just finishing up Obsession, the final book, when a short story was presented to me.