After A Single Spark went down, and my old beta (my 2nd one) disappeared I just took a break from writing. But now it's like I'm itching to get back to it again. I need yet another beta, spell check gets most of my spelling mistakes, what I need help with is grammar, syntax, etc. I'm the worst at that stuff. Also I might ask for opinions and comments on chapters before I put them up. I will need to see something you've edited before I take you on as a beta. So if you already post on the site I can look at that, if it's your work I would prefer that it not have been edited by a third party, I know that's common practice and that would kind of defeat the purpose of my wanting to see your editing skills. If you would rather I could send you a sample of my work and you could beta that for me, and I can review it to see how you did.
Now on to part two. Do you think you can handle being my beta? No, I'm not going to harass you until you get chapters back to me unless your like three weeks later than I anticipated, and you've not let me know that you'll need the extra time. What I mean is simply I can and will write about anything. If I think I can get a good grip on a nice storyline I'll go for it, nothing is to taboo. Case and point, I have a story named Escape From Fate that I was working on before I took my break. While it was very well received at Spark, on another site I temporally had it up on I had mixed reviews. By sheer numbers I had more positive reviews than any story I had ever done, but at the same time I had more negative reviews, A LOT more negative reviews. It is a very dark fic that I had barely even gotten started on, so I'd only scratched the surface. One of my favorite reviews was something like "I can't believe you would put Kagome in that situation, your sick, absolutely disgusting." Now I do take exception to being called sick and disgusting, everything I wrote had a purpose. I wasn't violent for the sake of being violent. If your attached to seeing Kagome and Sesshomaru in the image you see them in on TV I don't think you should be my beta.
In closing if I have the worst luck with betas EVER. Technically I've had four, but I don't really count two of them. Ivy my original was a godsend. First choice hit it off wonderfully, loved her! Even when she needed to stop things ended well. Oh what I wouldn't give to have Ivy as my beta again! Actually I think she might be on this site, but I'm not sure if it's the same one or not. But since then, one did fairly well, they were around for a while but then one day I never heard back from them. One lasted maybe a week didn't even get the first chapter back from them. And the one that really irked me was the chick that ran spell check and changed the way I wrote Inuyasha to Inu Yasha and then asked me about her great skills as a beta, apparently she thought I wouldn't notice:angry: . So should this leave me in a lurch yet again I think I will run screaming in the opposite direction from every beta I see for the rest of my life, and then all of my stories will be filled with mistakes, that will drive everyone insane that actually reads them.
Later
(Wow that's a really long request for a beta, I'll shut up now)
~JK
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