Notes: The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, Intro and Chapter 1
So I, being the industrious little wannabe-writer I'm becoming, checked out from the library a book by an editor-turned-agent about what prospective-writers can or should do, and what keeps people from writing and publishing. And then I devoured it in a day and a half
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For what is a beta but an editor? We both know that betas and authors can end up working verrrry close together on a project, and that polishing is not a strong enough word to the kinds of overhauls we may end up doing.
That's what makes me wince about stuff like Nanowrimo and word counts... because the first draft of a story, of a novel shouldn't be what you try to sell to publishers, which I suspect a lot of people do. And then they don't do all the revising that successful writers do and wonder why their manuscript has been rejected. idk. There's more to it than just "writing down the story", though settling in for the long haul definitely seems to be a part of that.
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I've totally thought throughout the book about the relationships between what she says and what I've learned or even just heard about fanwriters. From what it sounds like, the best editor/writer relationships, and even more the best agent/writer relationships, have the same strengths as the best beta/writer relationships, including longevity, deep trust and willingness to guide one another, and a base of friendship, even if the friendship doesn't develop first.
In other words, HAY WE'VE GOT A LEG UP ON THE COMPETITION! SCORE! :DD
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