Comments on: Book progress update http://www.rebekahharris.com/book-progress-update/ Reviews of Young Adult Novels by aspring young adult author Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:43:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Caryn Caldwell http://www.rebekahharris.com/book-progress-update/comment-page-1/#comment-31 Caryn Caldwell Wed, 20 May 2009 17:44:06 +0000 http://www.rebekahharris.com/?p=246#comment-31 I clicked over here from Alyson Noel's blog and found your update interesting. Considering that you've only had non-writers read what you've written (or so it sounds) you've gotten pretty far! Have you thought about finding critique partners, though? There are lots of ways to find them - meetings and conferences addressing your area of writing, writers' forums, etc. I found two of mine through blogging; in both instances we became blog friends and eventually one of us mentioned to the other, "I have these chapters I'd like an opinion on. Want to trade work?" I found my third partner through the Will Write for Wine forums - again, we got along great online and it slowly moved toward trading critiques. A sign that someone is probably not the right critique partner for you is if they find few if any changes. I know I once had a good friend of mine read some chapters that I knew were flawed, yet her critique was full of compliments. I knew it wasn't a fair assessment so I thanked her and found someone else. Friends and relatives are often the least objective readers because they don't want to hurt your feelings, and they often don't know enough about craft to make informed suggestions. Hope you don't mind me mentioning all this - for all I know, you've already done this. I'd just hate to see someone not get published because they're not having the right people read what they've written! :-) I clicked over here from Alyson Noel’s blog and found your update interesting. Considering that you’ve only had non-writers read what you’ve written (or so it sounds) you’ve gotten pretty far! Have you thought about finding critique partners, though? There are lots of ways to find them – meetings and conferences addressing your area of writing, writers’ forums, etc. I found two of mine through blogging; in both instances we became blog friends and eventually one of us mentioned to the other, “I have these chapters I’d like an opinion on. Want to trade work?” I found my third partner through the Will Write for Wine forums – again, we got along great online and it slowly moved toward trading critiques.

A sign that someone is probably not the right critique partner for you is if they find few if any changes. I know I once had a good friend of mine read some chapters that I knew were flawed, yet her critique was full of compliments. I knew it wasn’t a fair assessment so I thanked her and found someone else. Friends and relatives are often the least objective readers because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, and they often don’t know enough about craft to make informed suggestions.

Hope you don’t mind me mentioning all this – for all I know, you’ve already done this. I’d just hate to see someone not get published because they’re not having the right people read what they’ve written! :-)

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