Thursday, May 12, 2011

I'm a Beta-Yogurt Maker!

It's true! I totally made my own yogurt yesterday. Got the milk, added the start. Voila...yogurt!!! I'm a yogurt maker!

Sorry, I just thought that was so cool. Now on to writing.

Last weekend I attended Storymakers with about 499 other awesome writers/agents/editors. It was amazing!

The pitch went FABULOUS (btw, thanks for all your comments last week. Helped me a ton). The agent was awesome. I was very impressed (I almost begged for her to come home with me, but then she'd be stuck making yogurt and eating green smoothies. I don't know if she'd like that very much.)

<a href="http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/">Elena J</a>. taught us what to do and what not to do on blogger. (Can I just say that she is incredible. Best conference teacher ever!)


But what I really wanted to talk about was Beta readers (or Alpha, whatever you want to use). Those people who look at the whole ms and tell you where you went wrong, if it's entertaining, or if they wanted to throw the book across the room (or how brilliant you are).

Once you have your ms done and polished the best you think it can be, send it to your betas.

Right now I have four of them, two adult writers and two awesomely-cool teens (because that's who I write for).

Then you wait.

Once you get their opinions back, you can correct your ms, make it a little more shiny and polished.

I highly recommend it. (But the waiting is a killer.) Okay, I must get back to work (waiting)...*whipcrack*

Do you you use Betas? If so who do you use? If not...why not?

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