On access

[mrissa]

Something recent made me feel like I needed to put this out in public in black and white (or, y'know, whatever colors you've chosen for your friendslist). None of you on lj are the proximate cause, but...sometimes you just need to make sure everyone is on the same page.

My manuscripts are mine.

When you publish something, you generally lose all control over who reads it. Anyone who's willing to shell out the money -- or anyone who has a library or a friend willing to shell out the money -- can read what you wrote. It is public. It is a matter of record. It is no longer completely yours.

Unpublished manuscripts are not like that.

You don't have some divine right to read one of my unpublished manuscripts if I don't want you to. I don't care who you are or what our relationship is -- friendly, romantic, familial, whatever. I don't have to give you a copy in any particular stage unless I want to. In these early stages, I may give you a copy to read just for fun if I'm feeling magnanimous, but I don't have to. If I ask people to read and critique my drafts, that is a fairly selfish act: it is for my benefit in improving the novel. Their potential benefit in enjoying the novel (or, hey, short story, essay, whatever) is not the main thing.

I am not obliged to care what you think of my writing.

The obvious example here is my grandmother. You all know I love my grandmother and have a very close relationship with her. But my grandmother reads biographies and Christian historical romances. Asking her for input on Thermionic Night and rewriting it to her standards would be stupid, and we both know that, because she is not my target audience. Readers "like her" will not generally be readers of my books, unless you count the great-aunts. But they'll read whatever I manage to get published no matter what it's like, so rewriting for them is also silly. (Some people write gateway speculative fiction, SF or fantasy or the like for people who thought they didn't like it before. scalzi has talked about doing this with his books, and I appreciate it. It's a good thing for someone to be doing. It is not the only thing for anyone to ever do, and it's not what I'm doing with Thermionic Night.)

There are subtler cases -- if you don't ever like aliens in SF, ever ever ever no matter what, I'm not going to ask you to alpha read a first-contact novel. But I'm amazed at how many people don't get the cases I consider obvious.

Even if I care what you think of my writing, I am not obliged to ask your opinion at any specific point in the process.

I only had four alpha readers for Thermionic Night. I am interested in the opinions of more people than that. I value the opinions of more people than that. But there is only so much data I can process at various stages in the writing of a book. Having four people who read a good deal in the relevant genre, who in some cases write and publish in it, and who have a good mix of knowledge to catch my infelicities and ignorance to catch when I'm talking past the audience, was for my benefit and the benefit of the book. I will have more than four people looking at the book in this next draft. But even if I love you, and even if I respect your opinion about books, nothing says you have to be one of them.

I am not on a humanitarian mission here. I am not providing book relief to the bookless. I am trying to write a better book. If I'm trying to be nice to you, I will bake you bread or give you a hug or something. Reading and critiquing my book is a favor you are doing me, not a favor I am doing you, and you can never, ever demand that you have to do someone a favor they don't want. I can choose to give you a copy just for the fun of it, but I don't ever have to. Writer brains sometimes function weirdly, and if it's going to interfere with a better book later to give you a draft now, I'm just not going to do it. Period.

Pitching a fit and behaving as though you have been sorely abused because you do not yet have a copy of my latest draft is not a good way to convince me that I should share unpublished work with you. In the future, if you are my agent or my editor and I'm under contract and wibbling, then yes, I have signed you on for specific rights that may include haranguing me to send you the book. Until and unless? No whining, no fit-pitching. Behave like a grown-up.

I don't feel like I should have to say that, but apparently I do.

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Being an alpha reader is an honor, IMO. One does not demand honors, one earns them.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Being an alpha reader is an honor

Or, in the case of my poor husband, a Herculean task from which there is no escape. :)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Ehehe. Does he make you print it out for him like mine, whimpering about screen-reading and eyestrain with a glimmer of hope in his eye?

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

No, mine actually prefers to read onscreen, because he's a freak. He just procrastinates until I sit on him and threaten offer to read it out loud.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I sort of agree with this -- I don't ask people to be alpha readers unless I trust their fiction taste, their discernment, and their discretion (not to go telling the world how my draft sucked) -- but there are people I didn't ask who are just as honorable in their taste, discernment, and discretion. Some of them are on this friendslist. Some of the people I didn't ask have "earned" my trust and regard in general and in this specific way many times over.

Also, I don't want to give the impression that if only you're a really, really good beta reader, you will get "promoted" to alpha reader. I can't deal with more than a handful of readers at that stage, and I know a lot of good people. So it's not even a partial-ordering; in some ways I'm trying to get away from the "honor" model on this one.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Let me put it a little more clearly. It is an honor. So, for example, is being asked to be a bridesmaid. However, unless you're a billionaire with a private island to hold your wedding on, you really cannot bestow that honor on every single woman you hold in esteem. Therefore, you have to take into account who will work out best for you. Maybe Agnes has a newborn, and Mabel has to have major surgery the week of the wedding, so you ask Harriet and Doris. With the honor of alpha or beta or whatever reading, you have to take into account who will work out the best as well. I'm not going to ask all the same people to alpha my memoir as I ask to look at drafts of my poetry.

It is up to your people to respect your decisions and understand that you have reasons behind them, and not behave like spoiled children if not asked, and understand that while it is an honor to be asked, it is not a dishonor not to be.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, yes.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

The thing I ran up against was "I want to feel like an important force in your life, so, since I know the book is important to you, I am going to conflate the two: I will feel important if and only if I read the book."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. This is a problem. I refuse to go with this as a principle.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I need to learn to be less guiltable.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not to be facetious, but anger helps. If you can remember that you are not in the wrong here, you can sometimes be angry at the guilt trip, which in my experience tends to burn the guilt away a bit.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to read, sometime, if you should desire it. :)

Be aware I may reciprocate. :D

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I will put you on the "may read sometime" list. No obligation for being on the list; I'll ask, and you can say yes or no depending on your schedule and inclination.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

And (as you so eloquently put it) no obligation to you either. It may be that we can help each other at some point; I'm a much more efficient editor than I am a writer. :)

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

People get the weirdest ideas in their heads when they have writers as friends/relatives. Sorry you're having to thwap certain people with a cluestick right now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wrote my first novel with my best friends reading each page as it came off the pen. But I was 11, and we lived in each other's brains that year, and I'd have been appalled at the thought that I should even attempt doing it since. Ask markgritter: when he comes into the office, I almost always stop typing unless I'm clear that he's here to talk to timprov.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Seems like common sense to me.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Sorry you have to be so explicit.

[cadithial.livejournal.com]

On the topic, sortof, I'll be reading the one you sent me this weekend :) It's an honor to be able to help out, as I read so much / fast that publishers don't keep up.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

*Loves bread and hugs and is perfectly happy to wait to buy a copy of the book off the Barnes & Noble shelf and read it then*