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Guidelines for That Reader

Typewriter keysAsk­ing some­one to read—for the first time—something you have writ­ten is always a ner­vous mak­ing time. Over the years, I have devel­oped some rules for myself when doing this.

  1. Choose one per­son. Too many read­ers can be confusing.
  2. Make sure your MS is in stan­dard read­able form. (I recall some­one once send­ing me 200 pages of sin­gle spaced, half-inch mar­gin text. Unreadable!)
  3. Choose some­one you trust. You need to trust them to say neg­a­tive as well as pos­i­tive things.
  4. Choose some­one whose lit­er­ary judg­ment is good. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly your best friend, but some­one who has the skill to ana­lyze writing.
  5. Do not tell this per­son what you have writ­ten. Present the work, not your judg­ment. Let the work speak for itself.
  6. Let them fol­low their own sched­ule to respond.
  7. When you get a response NEVER argue. Always thank.
  8. Take time to think about your response before rewrit­ing. Crit­i­cism is not nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­rect. Some parts of the crit­i­cism might be use­ful, oth­ers not.
  9. Focus on the big aspects of the crit­i­cism, not the small points.
  10. Remem­ber, being judged is nev­er fun, but always necessary.
  11. If you are going to have a long wait for a response, start some­thing new.

1 thought on “Guidelines for That Reader”

  1. Wise words on being judged, its neces­si­ty and its ter­rors. I’d be inter­est­ed in how you feel about writ­ing groups, those that meet reg­u­lar­ly over a long peri­od of time to read aloud, crit­i­cize and support.

    Reply

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