Sandcastles are for Children

Thin fingers trailed the smooth surface but the pebbles stayed in place. Her hard work had paid off. Hours of love had gone into her castle. It started out as a muddy lump of sand and evolved into a gorgeous structure by the guidance of her heart.

In those hours, she learned the meaning of love.

The sand flowed and pulsated beneath her fingers, responsive to her will, but it also knew how to tickle her fingers and give them a gentle nudge in the right direction. To the kids recklessly thrashing around her, she knew the relationship did not look balanced. She knew she looked like a fool. They saw the nicks in the sand as flaws. But she didn't care. Because she knew better. She leaned in and gave the hardy sand a dry peck. Her masterpiece. Her time, effort, and most importantly, love.

The shuffle of approaching feet drew her from her trance. The bare, aging feet of her parents planted themselves firmly in her view, shamelessly crushing her masterpiece beneath them.

The girl cried out in horror and pain.

"Sandcastles are for children," they said.

"You can always make a new one," they said.

"There's better ones out there," they said.

"That one was no good, anyway," they said.

"You're too young to understand."

They gripped the hand of their adult daughter and pulled her away from love.

"You have us," they said.

"You don't need anything else, because we love you."

When Beta-Reading & Forum Communities Do Not Turn Out As Planned

With classes out for the semester, I have decided to return to my writing. This post I drafted several months ago, but I will post it now to explain my hiatus and because it is worth mentioning. I have not edited any phrasing, so some statements may not be current.

So my time at WriYe has drawn to an end before even completing one year on the forum. I'm sure I've already reached my goal but I have not updated my word count since starting grad school. I've fallen behind on my writing because of my environment changes, one of them being that I will no longer be on WriYe. The culture of the main demographic of many hobbies I partake in has an outward welcoming aura but always turns out to be extremely closed and somewhat rude.

My first beta reading experience was also at WriYe and it was a complete disappointment. Neither of the beta readers that I selected, both fairly active and well-liked members of the forum, upheld their end of the bargain and the moderators did little to help (click below for details).

All in all, I'm putting this out there to say there are two writers who are holding on to my first ever completed manuscript and that this has been my first experience with beta reading. There is really no way to say "be careful." One of the readers I was decently acquainted with myself and still this fiasco.

Yes, life happens, but, short of a dire long-term emergency, nothing excuses you from the responsibility of a contract or keeps you from sending a note of "I'm sorry but I can't do it" or "I need more time."

I am very thankful that the forums motivated me to complete two manuscripts, but I am quite sure I do not owe them my longest manuscript as collateral.