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.
I have postponed this post for a while in hopes that the individuals in offense would come through. This incident along with my current busyness contribute to my lack of activity on this blog.
If an individual is quickly responding to you every day and immediately cuts correspondence directly after receiving your manuscript for a period of months despite continuing a frequent online presence, that individual's agenda would become pretty obvious to the average person.
The extent to which a moderator I contacted went out of her way to form excuses for the offender unsettled me and should have raised a warning flag for me then. It made sense to make one or two, but she went over and beyond. After, she claimed she would still try to help, then never responded to me again. Note that this is a moderator who is on every day responding to new posts. Additionally odd, the other beta reader ceased correspondence with me around that time, and it has been over 2 weeks since she said she informed me she had been done for a while and would send in her notes. She also gets on regularly and is a moderator.
It didn't take me long to remember that these people are all friends and I have frequently seen moderators with these dispositions team up against groups (promoting discriminatory treatment on forums especially) and individuals that they dislike personally.
So, the negative experiences I had on WriYe that remain unmentioned have culminated in a strange, unprofessional, and potentially racist cold-shouldering and theft of my work. The moderator went out of her way to say no one would steal my work because they work hard on their own ideas.
Stealing another author's work doesn't mean just publishing their manuscript. That would be ridiculous on many levels. It simply means stealing their ideas, which isn't necessarily illegal. It's the idea of that breach of trust, lack of integrity, and intended malice that makes me, and many other writers I have been surprised to see silenced on the internet, as in my case, frustrated.
I don't intend for this to be a sacking of the forum (it's not very active anyway), but anyone would be able to tell which forum I meant, and it is a wonderful forum for people who fit into the demographics there.
I hope this instead furthers awareness and promotes conversation on the unspoken-of downsides of things and ways to overcome those difficulties. In too many areas, we ignore the flipside and shun those who try to talk about it.
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