- Have fun! Writing books is an exhilarating, challenging, and a deeply creative and intelligent endeavor. In the midst of creating new ideas and organization and revisions, though, there’s always the possibility of getting so caught up in the details that the initial excitement gets lost. Don’t let that happen! Change to a different aspect, or go read for inspiration, or get some exercise, or play a game, anything to clear your mind. Come back to your book when you’re ready to work on it with enthusiasm.
- Don’t be afraid! Write your chapters and publish excerpts to this site. Too often, authors want perfection before they are ready to present their work. Instead, post an excerpt when it’s good enough to share, with the expectation that other people will help you develop it into a final form in stages.
- No one ever gets to see your first draft. There’s a lot of freedom to create and explore, knowing that no one will ever see the mistakes, false starts, messiness, incoherence, and other flaws. Write freely and without constraints, knowing you’ll either fix it later or throw it away without anyone else ever knowing the original.
- Always be looking to improve. This site is meant to encourage learning, experimenting, failing, changing. We are all a community working together to make better books. The first drafts are expected to need improvement.
- Receive criticism well. No one has ever created the perfect book. Look as much forward to the areas of improvement as to the positive comments. Embrace the notion that people took the time and concern to read your story and give you their impressions.
- Evaluate all criticism and decide what to accept. Not all criticism, even if meant well, is always helpful. Something that could be the very best aspect of your story can be criticized by someone who disagrees. It’s your story – you decide. If the suggestion for improvement is valid, be grateful to the person who submitted it and make changes. If you feel the change deters from what you’re trying to convey, feel free to disregard it. Again, it’s your book – you decide.
- When possible, follow the format for reviewing and giving feedback to other member’s book excerpts:
- Find positive things you liked about the excerpt. Make it detailed, like “You conveyed your thoughts well,” or “There is enough information here for me to understand the full breadth of the subject covered.” Feel free to elaborate on your notes; give enough detail so the author knows you paid close attention to the excerpt for which they worked so diligently.
- Be detailed in things needed for improvement. If something doesn’t seem to work well, or doesn’t make sense, or could use some grammatical help, let the author know so he or she can improve the story. If you offer a change that you think would be helpful, be sure to explain exactly why it would be helpful and to which audience. Your feedback is far more helpful if you can explain the context rather than just your opinion.
- All feedback and communication will be supportive. We are all learning on this site, regardless of whether writing our very first book or a published author with a dozen best-selling books. Your feedback is vital towards an author’s journey in becoming a better writer so it should always be based on helping.
- Do not assume an author’s age based on their book. This site has beginning authors who are young and just learning to write, but it also has mature adults who are also just beginning their writing, or trying to write for a different audience. In either case, they’re looking for feedback to become better writers. Give the same detailed feedback for an excerpt regardless of what you believe to be the author’s age.
- Take advantage of the learning materials on this site. The courses and forum discussions are all made available so we can all share and learn. While writing chapters and receiving feedback is helpful in specifics, it’s just as important to learn from the collected wisdom in overall categories.
- Worth repeating – Have fun!
