If I didn't hate poetry so much,

[hmpf]

beccatoria, I'd write an ode to you or something. I know I've said this before, but there's no way, really, I could ever say it too often (and I'm doing it in public this time so people who encounter you will know what a fabulous human being you are, and also because you make me happy and this is my LJ so I can talk about what makes me happy here *g*): you're the best thing that ever happened to my writing.

It's probably no exaggeration to say that the beta process for 68 Wives and How to Love a Madman was/is... *intense*, and throughout it all you've been unfailingly patient, and magnificently perceptive and thoughtful. I'm constantly amazed by the amount of *communication* that happens between us when you beta my fic - amazed by the fact that you get what I want to do (even with the largely subconscious, highly abstract stuff!), and by the fact that I get what you mean when you criticise something I do, and by the fact that you get what I mean when I defend what I do, and so on. Language is often a poor tool for understanding and communicating the finer points of language - yet we make do amazingly well with it in our exchanges, and that's largely due to you. And somewhere along that string of exchanges my formerly vague, hard to articulate problems become tangible, intelligible, and ultimately solvable. It's like untangling knots in the mind.

So, thank you - for untangling knots in my mind, and for making me so much more aware of what I do when I write, and for helping me to learn to talk about what I do. Thank you.