Many aspiring writers struggle to find beta readers to help them polish a manuscript.
Over at Reddit, self-published new adult author Aubrey Rose shared her secret for finding early readers for your work. Writers of all different genres can benefit from her advice. Check it out:
Don’t ask family or friends; their critiques are worthless. Are you part of any writing groups? You should be! Go join a few now for your next novel. I have a group of awesome friends online who have been invaluable beta readers for me. For now, go to Goodreads and find an author who writes the same kind of stuff as you. Look at the people who’ve reviewed his stuff, and consider if their reviews are accurate and insightful. Message 5 of them and ask them if they would read and critique your work. But really, fellow authors are the best because they can point out tangles in your structure and help you fix them better than readers can.
Rose has published a long list of books since starting her career two years ago. She also revealed how she manages this prolific pace and a full-time job. Here’s an excerpt:
I try to write at least a thousand words a day, and on the weekends I do double that or so. I do have a full-time job that takes up a lot of time. Right now Blind Wolf is doing so well that I’m pumping out a sequel as quickly as I can. Yesterday I wrote 5k words, today I’m at 4k so far. I only work on one project at a time, since it allows me to publish on a more regular interval … I listen to this Ira Glass video every other week or so. I think the hardest part for me was accepting that I need to put my heart and soul into my writing if I want to get better. It’s too easy to say “oh, well, I’m just writing romance, it doesn’t need to be great.” Fear of failure is the biggest part of writer’s block, and in order to fail you have to be invested in it. On the flip side, in order to succeed you also have to be invested in it.