In a departure from a lot of advice, Lawrence Bloch (I can never remember if that's an H or a K, oh, well) is a fan of having your fiirst draft pretty much in your head, and he dislikes the idea of "just type whatever, don't worry if you're being sloppy about typos, the first draft doesn't really count." He says it just teaches people to be sloppy writers. For me, having a typo in the sentence above is like having a rock in my shoe. It gets worse and worse, and eventually it obsesses me until I remove it. He likes the idea of going back a few pages or paragraphs whenever you sit down to do new work as a means of priming the pump, and it's a good time to fix egregious typos and punctuation problems.

Sometimes, he says, the first thing you type is good enough to stand, after the basic typos etc. are fixed. Sometimes it isn't. I liked being freed from the idea that you were going to have to go through three or four revisions of something. It gives you the freedom to be a good writer off the block.

I liked being freed from the idea that you were going to have to go through three or four revisions of something. It gives you the freedom to be a good writer off the block.

It comes down to personal styles, in the end. Writer A may want a whip hand over their characters, and rigidly adhere to certain personal rules. Another writer may go freeform and whittle down later.

My first drafts are usually shitty, but they're all-over grammatical. Most of the time, I write so slowly that I've already revised most of the illogic, vaguery, and clarity problems out of the draft before I've gotten to the end of it.

When I've done beta, I have tended to mark homophones, dangling modifiers, and like that -- meaning-changing problems, rather than cosmetic ones, and problems the author won't notice herself. I do this in addition to the "how many digits are in lat/long coordinates" and "I have no idea how this scene relates to the previous one" marks.

I have had a beta who sat down and queried every one of my odd metaphors, looking the words up in the dictionary and wondering whether it was an appropriate image. (E.g., to "tamp" is a verb meaning to pack down tightly by hammering on a thing -- so do I really want to say, "she tamped down her lips" when all I mean is that she pressed her lips together disapprovingly? Similarly, is it possible for " a long minute" to pass, since all minutes are, really, exactly the same length?) I think that was above and beyond the call, although it did make me go back and consider my word choices more carefully.

I guess it never occured to me that beta was ever about proofreading.

I'm always just wondering, "is this story any good?"

I can't help proofreading. I don't figure that's what a beta read is all about, but if I read something prior to it being declared gold, and a grammar error gets through, it's my fault. So I put everything in my comments, unless the writer has been specific.

First of all, I'd like to apologize if I've angered or offended anyone when they've sent me their work to beta. I honestly had no idea I was doing something that most writers find offensive.

And honestly, ask yourself this: If you send people a tense new scene between Jack and Anna, are you really asking for, or expecting, comments like "please learn the difference between "than" and "then""?

I want both levels of feedback at once. Yes, tell me what you think of the characters, whether the pacing is tight enough, etc., but for God's sake tell me if I've made any typos or misused a word or put too many long, convoluted sentences in a row! Because that's just embarrassing, and the sooner I fix those glitches, the happier I am.

To me, grammar and style are like edges in skating--it doesn't matter how good you are at everything else until they're in place, so you might as well get them right to start with. They're the fundamentals, the basics, the building blocks upon which everything else grows.

But apparently I'm writing backwards. I had no idea. (Not that I plan to change how I write. It works for me, and it would pain me to not care about grammar/style right from the beginning. I do my best to get it right in my rough drafts. But I'll try to take a different approach to critiquing, or at least be more clear about how I approach the process, lest I offend others.)

Allyson, speaking of beta-reading, did I put my foot in it the other day by offering you a completely unasked for suggestion in my email to you? After I sent it, I felt like such a big mouth. Plus, not sure I stressed how much I really liked what I read.

Susan, it's not backwards--it's just a different process. That's what makes writing an art, IMO.

There is (or should be) a difference between what you expect of your own writing process and what you expect of somebody else's.

I'm with you; I fix all the grammar and typos I can, because they itch me. I also am suspicious that somebody who can't handle grammar probably can't handle the big stuff.

However, when somebody asks me for an edit, I ask them what kind of edit they want. And editing should go top-down; it is far more important to know that Character A has no function in the story than to know that you're ending too many sentences with prepositions.

I guess it never occured to me that beta was ever about proofreading.

To me, it isn't, especially in fiction. But even in non-fiction, that isn't ever what I'm looking for.

Similarly, is it possible for " a long minute" to pass, since all minutes are, really, exactly the same length?

You know, while I can see how that might be useful, I think my first reaction would be to grit my teeth. My second reaction would be to write said editor off as nonintuitive. Which would potentially lose me a good editor...