After The Naked Mind came An Eye for an Eye. Having discovered the YOU WRITE ON Website, I decided to try my luck there. The book was finished, or so I thought and so I posted my first three chapters on the site. Of course on this site you have to critique other authors work, in order to get people to do the same for you. So this I did. Some samples I read were truly awful, but amongst them were some excellent pieces, which later went on to do really well. One or two even got published.
After doing about a dozen crits, I set my own out into the big wild world and waited full of expectation for the glowing comments to come through. Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out like that. In truth I got indifferent comments, that made me realize I still had a lot of work to do.
So I revised my first three chapters, over and over again, improved the comments, but not good enough for my own expectations. Along the way I met up with a guy, who helped me improve a great deal over the next few months. We swapped stories, I did my best for him, and he in turn gave me titles of books that I should read, such as King on Writing by Stephen King, Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress, Dynamic Characters by Nancy Kress,the 38 Most Common Fiction Mistakes by Jack Bickham to name a few.
I did this, listened to what he said and managed to get into the top twenty on the Site out of hundreds of submissions. Not bad eh. Then I started to send it out to Agents but although I had some positive comments, it wasn't still wasn't enough.
Coming next time : I correspond and meet an acclaimed author.
After doing about a dozen crits, I set my own out into the big wild world and waited full of expectation for the glowing comments to come through. Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out like that. In truth I got indifferent comments, that made me realize I still had a lot of work to do.
So I revised my first three chapters, over and over again, improved the comments, but not good enough for my own expectations. Along the way I met up with a guy, who helped me improve a great deal over the next few months. We swapped stories, I did my best for him, and he in turn gave me titles of books that I should read, such as King on Writing by Stephen King, Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress, Dynamic Characters by Nancy Kress,the 38 Most Common Fiction Mistakes by Jack Bickham to name a few.
I did this, listened to what he said and managed to get into the top twenty on the Site out of hundreds of submissions. Not bad eh. Then I started to send it out to Agents but although I had some positive comments, it wasn't still wasn't enough.
Coming next time : I correspond and meet an acclaimed author.