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Showing results for tags 'Volunteer'.
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I've been with GA for a few years now. When I first joined I would have killed to have immediately found a good beta and editor. Over time, for most things I found myself settling down and working with the same two or three incredible people over and over again. It was comfortable, and I knew I could rely on their honest opinions of my work. Flash forward to recently. While there are some damn fine editors working on site the Betas seem to have vanished. What is a Beta? Glad you asked. A beta reader is not an editor. A beta reader is just that, a second reader of a story. They look for things that an author missed or screwed up. I'm not talking spelling or punctuation primarily. A beta is the one who catches when an author changes a character's name by mistake, hasn't given the reader enough information to follow a part of a story, or will point out where an author might have gone over board with the details and is bogging his or her story down making a reader lose interest in what was happening. They help you fill in when you are lacking and cut when you went overboard. They help by asking questions while they read over the work. What did you mean here, because I didn't understand? Where did character A go, because you never mentioned them again? Would love to know what Character B does for a living. You told us a few times he goes to work but as what? Be aware you started this story from Kelly's pov but for the last chapter you switched to Dan's pov and it is the only time you have done that in twenty two chapters. Yes, a beta reader looks for the mistakes, points out where you did well, and helps an author to craft a story worthy of putting before a reader. A good beta is worth their weight in gold. Why am I explaining all this? I will be honest. I am a selfish son of a bitch who has gone looking for a beta since my usual betas have personal issues and are/continue to be unavailable. Therefore I went to the site's Gay Author's Writing Community and asked for a beta. Unfortunately, a once rich source seems to have dried up. Do you enjoy reading? Can you be honest without being offensive? Can you work well with temperamental people? Then go talk to Louis and Jo Ann. There are authors who could use your assistance. Thank you
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So today I started doing volunteer work at a small museum near where I went to undergrad, called Newark Historical Society. I decided to do this in order to keep my skills relevant while I look for a paying job. They started me on a project where I'm going to go through 5 boxes that city hall sent them, which consist of photo albums from the 20th century Memorial Day parades. I'm not doing any real processing yet, just a little inventory. Today I looked at Box 3 of the Collection- it had albums from 1969, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, circa 1986, 1989, and circa 1990. A lot of the albums had the years embossed on the front, but three of them did not. I had to do a little detective work for the ones that I deduced as being from about 1986 and 1990- one of the volunteers that is a fireman, and said he recognized the vintage of the firetrucks from the mid-80's in one album, and the early 90's in another. What really nailed the year down, though, were two pictures that showed the winners of the Newark "Pushmobile" contest- basically, the soap box derby for this town. (It was gone by the mid-90's, because I moved to the town in 1995 and there wasn't anything like that.) In one album, it showed a photo of a boy who was announced the 1986 winner, and the other showed a little girl who was announced the 1990 winner. I really enjoyed trying to deduce the year- it was easy to get an "era" down in terms of the clothing, hair, and cars, but an exact year can be harder to come by. It was really funny looking at the 1990 photo album, because that's a year I can remember, and it really brought back memories of how things looked when I was 4, 5 years old. Another fun moment was when I was going through what I think was the '86 album, and I saw what looked like a brown 1981 Buick...that was our family car through about 1993, if I'm remembering correctly.