Thank God for the Brave Betas
Jun. 16th, 2010 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bewizeI am not going to link to the J2 racefail that is going on at the moment, because if it's not on your flist, just click on mine and you'll see it everywhere. What I'm going to do instead is talk about an experience I as a writer had with a wonderful, talented and damned brave beta reader. (She will probably read this, and should know who she is. If she permits me to name names, I will, otherwise, consider her as just Awesome Beta.)
I've written precisely one big bang fic in my life. It was written to a requester's SPN/X-men crossover prompt with the specific setting of New Orleans and a time frame that would have fallen before Katrina.
I wrote a ghost story that involved the Vaudun (or VooDoo) religion. When I sent it to my beta, she replied in approximately 2.6 seconds and said, "I am uncomfortable with the setting and subject matter in this fic."
I'll confess. It brought me up cold and I went and read what I'd written, wondering if I'd blindly crossed all sorts of lines. I caught a few things; I fixed a few things; but, I also decided to ask Awesome Beta to read a little bit of it and let me know her thoughts.
And she did. Other than the fact that it came back to me with red pen of death on it, she also clearly marked a few place that she still thought failed in terms of racism, sexism and cultural appropriation.
Again, I felt a little rocked. I mean, here I had deliberately chosen to include a cast of POCs because, having been to New Orleans, I damn well know that the city is multi-racial. I live in a similarly multi-racial city. I'd done my research on the ghost story, on the religious aspects, and on the racial politics of the city at the time. I included what I'd learned in my fic.
And I still got called out for Doing It Wrong.
It stung. But not as much as the realization that came a few days later of how badly I could have fucked it up.
I see a lot of flak (well deserved, too) being aimed at the beta readers for the fic that is at the center of the storm here. It makes me, as a writer, grateful that Awesome Beta spoke up and told me about my mistakes when I could still fix them. It made me grateful, because there isn't a single word I've written since where I don't watch myself for a repeat of my own fail.
This is not an attempt to pat myself on the back, because God knows I failed hard a few places in that first few drafts and in other things I've written. This is an attempt to say how grateful I am that Awesome Beta risked alienating me and hurting my feelings to point out where I needed to do better.
She taught me a lot, not just about being careful of my own work and the blinders that I still have in place to things that I still get wrong, but about having the sort of conviction and bravery that it takes to be the ONE voice in the ethos saying, "Do this better."
I've not read the J2 fic that caused this round of fail, but I've read others where I simply hit the back button and left because the fic made me uncomfortable. I've wondered before how certain things got past beta readers (and I'm not talking about grammar here). Someone commented somewhere (I've read a lot of links today) about the fact that most of the time our beta readers are our friends and may avoid saying something, because they don't want to hurt us.
I would just like to say to any friend of mine, that if I fail at something, please tell me so I can attempt to fix it. Please. I'd go so far as to beg you to do it.
At some point in time, we will all fail. We will ALL fail at something. We will ALL say something that is hurtful because of our ignorance about racism, sexism, ableism, LGBT issues, and any other number of things.
To me, I think the best lesson to be learned from this mess is that if we see our friends doing it, we should tell them. If a friend tells us that we are doing it, we should listen. That we all need to be more aware of what, exactly, we are doing.
And that Awesome Betas deserve all the praise in the world for being Awesome.
I've written precisely one big bang fic in my life. It was written to a requester's SPN/X-men crossover prompt with the specific setting of New Orleans and a time frame that would have fallen before Katrina.
I wrote a ghost story that involved the Vaudun (or VooDoo) religion. When I sent it to my beta, she replied in approximately 2.6 seconds and said, "I am uncomfortable with the setting and subject matter in this fic."
I'll confess. It brought me up cold and I went and read what I'd written, wondering if I'd blindly crossed all sorts of lines. I caught a few things; I fixed a few things; but, I also decided to ask Awesome Beta to read a little bit of it and let me know her thoughts.
And she did. Other than the fact that it came back to me with red pen of death on it, she also clearly marked a few place that she still thought failed in terms of racism, sexism and cultural appropriation.
Again, I felt a little rocked. I mean, here I had deliberately chosen to include a cast of POCs because, having been to New Orleans, I damn well know that the city is multi-racial. I live in a similarly multi-racial city. I'd done my research on the ghost story, on the religious aspects, and on the racial politics of the city at the time. I included what I'd learned in my fic.
And I still got called out for Doing It Wrong.
It stung. But not as much as the realization that came a few days later of how badly I could have fucked it up.
I see a lot of flak (well deserved, too) being aimed at the beta readers for the fic that is at the center of the storm here. It makes me, as a writer, grateful that Awesome Beta spoke up and told me about my mistakes when I could still fix them. It made me grateful, because there isn't a single word I've written since where I don't watch myself for a repeat of my own fail.
This is not an attempt to pat myself on the back, because God knows I failed hard a few places in that first few drafts and in other things I've written. This is an attempt to say how grateful I am that Awesome Beta risked alienating me and hurting my feelings to point out where I needed to do better.
She taught me a lot, not just about being careful of my own work and the blinders that I still have in place to things that I still get wrong, but about having the sort of conviction and bravery that it takes to be the ONE voice in the ethos saying, "Do this better."
I've not read the J2 fic that caused this round of fail, but I've read others where I simply hit the back button and left because the fic made me uncomfortable. I've wondered before how certain things got past beta readers (and I'm not talking about grammar here). Someone commented somewhere (I've read a lot of links today) about the fact that most of the time our beta readers are our friends and may avoid saying something, because they don't want to hurt us.
I would just like to say to any friend of mine, that if I fail at something, please tell me so I can attempt to fix it. Please. I'd go so far as to beg you to do it.
At some point in time, we will all fail. We will ALL fail at something. We will ALL say something that is hurtful because of our ignorance about racism, sexism, ableism, LGBT issues, and any other number of things.
To me, I think the best lesson to be learned from this mess is that if we see our friends doing it, we should tell them. If a friend tells us that we are doing it, we should listen. That we all need to be more aware of what, exactly, we are doing.
And that Awesome Betas deserve all the praise in the world for being Awesome.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 06:22 pm (UTC)I agree, though, that without discussion - without admitting our mistakes and apologizing for them - we can not move forward, not individually, not as a group, and certainly not as a society.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 02:36 am (UTC)I feel sorry in some ways for the author, for putting in so much time on something that ended up disgusting and enraging so many people. She has definitely learned the hard way, although we can't be certain just what she's learned. (But, still, what was she thinking?)
I made a totally innocent mistake in High School gym class one time, calling out something to the black girl who'd been my lockermate back in Junior High that was HIGHLY OFFENSIVE TO PERSONS OF COLOR, and I had no clue, and Anita took me aside and explained Very Nicely. She knew me well enough to know I didn't mean anything by my remark. I was appalled, contrite and newly educated. And lucky that Anita derailed whatever other POC were saying about me by saying, "I'll talk to her; she doesn't know any better."
But like you said, we all fail. Just today I was thinking about the way my nephew calls things "gay", when he really means they're "lame"... and then of course I realized that LAME IS JUST AS BAD! *head/desk*
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 06:26 pm (UTC)I know. And that honestly breaks my heart. But, I still can't excuse it. Whereas a member of a certain group has no duty to explain what it's like to be a part of that group, a beta reader accepts the responsiblity to plice your work for you own mistakes. It's not an easy job, which is why I'm giving all credit to the Awesome Beta in this tale here.
"I'll talk to her; she doesn't know any better." - This may be true, and in my opinion is especially true of children, but I don't know that it carries much weight when it comes to a justification. I think this is precisely the sort of thing that keeps coming up in conversations about a writer's duty to take care with her subject and to do the research.
I'm glad that you had someone brave enough to tell you about your mistake and help you learn from it. May we all be so lucky.
Just today I was thinking about the way my nephew calls things "gay", when he really means they're "lame"... and then of course I realized that LAME IS JUST AS BAD! *head/desk*
It's an ongoing and never ending process, but I wouldn't really have it any other way!
Thanks so much for your comments.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 06:27 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed the post. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 06:27 pm (UTC)*hugs*