The past two weeks for me have been filled with excitement, disappointment, tears, and smiles. Thanks to the wonderful Maggie Stiefvater, I had my first experience with someone critiquing my novel-to-be. As Maggie and many other authors point out, it is best to have another writer or avid reader to read your work before sending it out to agents or editors. Most authors these days have a critique group, usually made up of one or two other authors. So I asked Maggie on her live journal how she came by her two critique partners, and in response, she set up a post so that other writers that read her blog could find a critique partner or two.
And so began the heart breaking process. I have barely even talked about the plot to my mostly-finished novel because I wanted to know exactly where I was going before I told anyone what it was about. But I was certainly not going to let this opportunity slip through my fingers. So I typed up a little short paragraph about what the main idea of my story was, and waited to be requested as a possible-future-critique-partner.
That day, I had never been so excited in my life. I received ten emails from other aspiring writers who wanted to read my work! People actually thought my story sounded interesting! So I polished my little baby and sent it's first 50 pages out into the world. No one had ever read my private work, and I was SCARED. I knew that there were some grammar mistakes here and there, and I knew that my main character needed to be a little more unique, but I thought the main thing in itself was pretty good for a first draft.
