A bunch of questions followed my September 29th post about accepting writing criticism.  Chantal wrote, I’m running into the problem of who to give my novel to for reading. I know I need some outside opinions before it’s complete, but I’m wary about just handing out my novel to everyone who offers, even if I do know them. Do you have any advice?

And Erin Edwards offered these excellent suggestions:  A good question to ask a prospective and willing reader is what kind of books they like to read. Ask if they like books that you think are similar to yours in genre, tone, and/or age group, etc.

Writing requires enormous patience, as we all know.  Finding the right critics sometimes calls for patience too.  It’s like moving to a new town or a new school.  For a while you try out friends before you find ones who suit.  Of the people who’ve offered to read your novel, you may just have to guess about who is best equipped for the task.  If your first readers don’t work out, try other people.  You may be surprised at who can help you.

Going through someone else’s novel is a big job.  If your reader isn’t experienced at criticism, he may not realize the complexity of the undertaking and may not be able to finish.  I don’t think you should be angry at such a failure or think that it reflects badly on either the person or your book.  Just give it to someone else.

You may need to have a discussion ahead of time with the person or people.  What does he think is involved?  Has he ever done this before?  What would you like to know from him?  How specific would you like him to be?  How fragile are you when it comes to your writing?  You probably don’t want to give away much about your book, because you don’t want to influence the reading.  Of course, if you’ve written a novel in experimental literature and the sentences don’t have ordinary meaning, you should prepare him, but if you’ve written a coming of age novel, for example, you needed say that, and if you think it falls apart from Chapter Fifteen to Chapter Eighteen, don’t mention this.  You want to see if your reader has that response too without being told ahead of time.  Naturally, you can ask afterward.

Also, you can start small and give your reader a chapter and see how that goes.  If all is well, you can give her the whole book.

When I was starting out I had the advantage of living in New York City where one can hardly step outside without tripping over a writer.  I formed critique groups with writing class members and members of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).  The groups kept falling apart, and I kept forming new ones.  A couple of years passed before I found a group that stayed together for a few years until it, too, disintegrated.  But for a while I was blessed.  Most of us were writing novels so we tolerated lots of pages from one another.

Even if you don’t live in a city, you can benefit from SCBWI, if you’re old enough to join (eighteen and up).  Your regional chapter will help you find or form a critique group.

If you’re under eighteen, you might see if a librarian or an English or Creative Writing teacher would look at your work.  The first readers of my very first book were two children’s librarians, who happened not to be great at criticism but who were fabulous at encouragement.  You also might join your school newspaper or literary magazine to find other writers.

A few days ago I listened to a radio program about frenemies.  I suggest you not give your book to a frenemy.

At the time I wrote that very first book, I lived on the same street as a published children’s book writer.  I hardly knew her, but I prevailed upon her to read my effort – I didn’t realize what an imposition that was.  When she gave the book back to me, she said, “You’re not a writer.”  Curiously I wasn’t devastated.  She did think one little bit in the book was funny, and she asked why I wanted to write when I could draw; there were my pencil drawings of birds in the book.  I discovered that she would much rather have been an illustrator than a writer, and somehow that took the sting out of her words.

If you can afford it, there are free-lance editors you can pay to look at your work and guide you.  If you know someone in publishing, that person may be able to give you a name, but they also advertise in writers’ magazines.   A good one can be enormously helpful, but of course be careful.  Look at the website.  Ask for references and follow up.

I have space in the post for another question on this topic.  More than one of you had the same question as Silver the Wanderer: …how do you know when someone is being honest with their criticism? Those who have read my work are really enthusiastic about it, but I’m not sure if that’s just because I’m young. Compliments are always nice, but I really need honest feedback. I think people might just be telling me it’s good so as to not hurt my feelings…

First of all, the compliments may be true.  Your readers may be very impressed.

Or you may not have found the right readers.  They may not have a clue about how to evaluate a piece of writing.  Enthusiasm, which may be genuine, may be all they have to offer.

Or they may not want to hurt your feelings.  That’s possible.  They may also be afraid that you’ll be angry, and they may be protecting themselves from a confrontation.

Which is why it is best if possible to find writers, because writers understand that writers need criticism.

Alas, dishonesty can be nasty as well as nice, and it can be anything in between.  A reader may be feeling rivalrous and may not want to say how much he liked what you wrote.  He may not be big enough to point out the terrific aspects of your story.  He may even be villainous enough to name flaws your story doesn’t have.  I haven’t experienced this, but a writer buddy once later confessed that she had given me story suggestions out of motives that were outside the story.  Nothing terrible had happened as a result, and I appreciated her belated candor.  At the time I had no idea.

So you may not be able to tell if a response is honest, and you may be hurt by a response, even by true criticism that you learn from.  The most important thing is to concentrate on your work, not on your feelings, and how to make the writing better.

Here’s a prompt: Three writer friends get together to discuss one another’s work.  Write the scene.  Invent snippets of the stories of each one.  I said not to show your writing to a frenemy, but two of your characters can be frenemies.  If you like, you can make up the most awful critique session imaginable, or you can be milder, but you need some tension.  You can be funny or serious or even tragic.  You can go into fantasy; the writers don’t have to be human.

Next week, another post about critiquing.  If you have more questions on the subject, please send them along.

Have fun, and save what you write!