Seeking an additional beta

[missmiah]

My current Beta has been reading my crappy fic from the day I first put fingers to keyboard and began prodding someone else's characters to bend to my will. She was a professional copy editor for a small newspaper, and eventual copy chief, for five years, and still does her thing on the side since she continues to work in the media. To me she is one of the most qualified "Readers" I've had the good luck to meet and I trust her decisions and suggestions completely.

She proofs in AP style which seems to be slightly at odds with the archive I'm attempting to post to. She also uses the Merriam Webster for spelling dilemma's (as do I) and this archive appears to use another dictionary as quite often we disagree; in the past I've always deferred to their request but short of having an Oxford (the end all and be all of wordsmithing) in front of me saying otherwise I believe from now on I may start pointing out that MW is widely used and I've yet to hear anyone say "oh, don't believe those MW peeps, they're smoking crack."

My most recent submission to this archive was returned as unable to comply with their standards, which is fine. There are a lot of comma issues - missing and abused. There are also a few instances where I must disagree with the official proof reader, but those are best left to be argued in a help box, rather than posted to my livejournal of bitterness, wouldn't you agree?

However, this has caused my dear beta and I to discuss the fact that she is getting rather annoyed with the Harry Potter genre and its ever wacky random capitalizations and hyphens, that AP style does not necessarily translate into written fic, and that perhaps a second set of eyes might not be a bad thing.

Call me eccentric, but I do not want to hand over my fic to someone I don't "know" nor do I want to approach some random e-stranger and ask them to free up time to proof my stories. I like my current beta, we mesh well, and I don't even have a clue as to how to find another that I will trust as much as her.

Basically, I'm asking those of you on my flist who write if you are intersted, or know of someone you trust who might be interested in taking on another writer for their betaing services. Unlike my early years in the fandom, I do not produce finished product weekly (or even monthly) and rarely have a chapter exceed 5000 words these days.

Thank you for reading this.

Comments

[prettyshiny.livejournal.com]

If you need me, hon, I'll gladly help. *looks nerdy*

[missmiah.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much. I've got a list of the corrections they asked me to make and I'm going through to make them than Beta 1 is going to read through again to see if she can find these "other errors". At that point I'm going to need a second beta, and I'll keep you in mind if you're still free.

[prettyshiny.livejournal.com]

I'm usually hiding offline, so just ping me when you need me. I'm way better at responding to that than emails. heh.