Using Beta Readers for Helpful Feedback

This week, I will be getting my feedback from the Beta readers (who are kind of like a focus group in business). I will likely have to fix things before going to press. The writer’s work is NEVER done, but, at some point, I have to draw the line in the sand, and go with it.

The publication process for this manuscript has been the equivalent of an undergraduate degree. I learned how much I didn’t know about writing, the craft itself, and about pleasing the reader. Bad writing CAN be informative. Fixing bad writing is an education.

The telling of a good tale is far more complex than I imagined when I started this writer’s journey.

What We Write About When We Write

What we write about when we write.

Please, please take the time to read this wonderful article (click the link above). It explores the agony of creation, the search for the perfect telling of the story, the revisiting of person, place and thing for the sake of getting it right.

Once I concluded my reading of it, I was revived to write. I realized that the wall I am hitting in my work is simply a part of the greater process. Now I embrace the wall, wrapping my arms around it, pressing my chest against its coolness, smelling the stale scents trapped in the paint. By entangling my essence with what stops my writing, I change both the obstacle and my response to it.

When To Stop Writing

A few days ago, I finished rewriting on my contributions to The Writers of the Desert Rose Cafe Anthology. I sent my revisions to the members who collate the contributions into the final manuscript. The volume will be turned over to Acorn Book Services for formatting and uploading to the marketplace for e-books. (Hopefully in December.)

I received a couple of specific criticisms from the publisher on two of my pieces. However, I revised almost every story, including my biographical paragraph.

After re-reading the pieces multiple times, I wanted to yank out several of my entries because now I hate them. I don’t want them published under my name. They aren’t perfect. They aren’t mature. They bore me. Some are pablum.  Pablum suggests simplistic writing.

I tell myself. “This is a first effort, so the stench of the amateur shouldn’t surprise anyone.” That’s my scared self speaking.

I’m delighted that the editor suggested changes to improve stories. Consequently, there are two or three pieces I think deliver entertainment for the reader. Satisfactorily. Worth the price of admission. Maybe leaving the reader curious about what comes next from this author.

And I grew. As an author. As a wordsmith. As a human being. As an experimenter.

Striving to make something excellent is good, to a point.  Sometimes a writer rewrites and rewrites, seeking perfection in a piece. But there  does come a time to stop: stop reworking, stop criticizing, stop touching up. At that point, it’s time to publish and let the chips fall where they may. It’s time to face the music.

Am I ready for the commercial press? Book buyers will vote. Readers will tell me.

If my collection of work is a screw up,  I hope a reader is brave enough to spell out specifics for me, not just the critique “I don’t like it.”  It’s the “I don’t like it because. . .” that helps me improve the next time.

What Happens after the Editor Says Yes?

Carrie Rubin does an excellent job answering that question in her post “Contracts, Edits and Errata.” It goes to show how green I am when I confess I didn’t know what an errata is. Carrie explains it and a lot more.

She received an acceptance letter a year ago. It has taken months to go through the editing, re-write and fix process. Now her novel is ready for publication. Next month is the release.

Please visit the link below to learn what happens after the editor says, “Yes, we’d like to publish your manuscript.” Some would say that is when the real work begins.

And, oh yes, congratulations Carrie!

http://carrierubin.com/2012/08/27/contracts-edits-and-errata-or-the-least-creative-title-ever/#comment-8381

The Five Mistakes Killing Self-Published Authors

The Five Mistakes Killing Self-Published Authors.

The link above is to Kristin Lamb’s blog. The linked article is invaluable to anyone who plans to self-publish. The key points she makes are:

1. Self-publishing makes it too easy to publish poor material.
2. Learn the business of writing before publishing.
3. Marketing is a necessary evil in order to sell books.
4. Don’t give your books away for free.
5. The minute you publish your first book, start your next one.

 

The Importance of Beginning Well

The Importance of Beginning Well.

The reader is king.

So, I went looking for what a reader believes makes  “a good book.” Reader Subhakar Das shares a thought that should be obvious: he says begin well when telling a story.

Subhakar Das says “There’s nothing quite like a book that grips from the very first line. As a reader I attach a great deal of importance to the first sentence. Every time I open a new book to the first page it is with trepidation for I feel that if the first sentence is not quite right, the whole book will be a disappointment. It is a sentiment shared. But is the first sentence that important?”

As an author, I am guilty of ignoring the power of the opening line. Sure, I understand that the first sentence needs to hook my reader. What I fail to appreciate is the damage done by a poor opening. Agents and acquiring editors will quit reading if the opening sentence doesn’t impress them. Booker Prize winner Ben Okri says that if the first sentence of a book does not grab him, he is liable to close the book then and there.

Ouch!

Das explains, “The magic of the first sentence of a book can also inspire the writer in you. This is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s impression of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis for before books were meant to help him sleep. He writes: ‘But this time the effect was just the opposite: I never again slept with my former serenity.’ The first sentence he was talking about was: ‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed into a gigantic insect.’ Such was the effect of Kafka’s writing, Marquez did not go to the university for the next few days for fear the spell would be broken.”

My advice? Re-examine the opening in the manuscript you are about to hand off to an editor. Be sure it is a zinger!

Suffer the Edit

Editing. It is bane and bounty.

I borrowed a quote from www.glimmertrain.com that sums up why a writer should buck up and suffer the edit:

That business of compression, of economy, did influence me. A lot of what I’d written was redundant and self-indulgent. It’s impossible to judge how much and to what degree, but I saw that, though I was very reluctant and even outraged to start with, cutting the novel down like that actually improved it.—Barry Unsworth, interviewed by Kevin Rabalais