The Five Beta Readers You Meet in Heaven

My revised opus is sitting in my agent's inbox. We shall see what happens.

But I want to tell you my revelatory experience with beta readers. There are TYPES. If you are lucky and have cultivated your writerly Team of Rivals well, you will be surrounded by very different beta readers that give you very different feedback.

Different is good. If everyone is agreeing with each other (and worse, you) this is bad. Is it possible that your work is so perfect, so completely without flaw that there is only consensus in your little garden? No. I really don't think so. Even if you disagree with most of your feedback, just being open to those different opinions will challenge you, make you think deeper. This can only make the work better. Which is the point, right?

Let me introduce you to my wonderful beta readers.

THE OUTSIDER
Maribel, my outsider beta, is my friend from high school. I love her dearly and trust her. But she's also smart, loves to read widely and has specialist knowledge that I needed to consult for this book (specifically, she's Cuban.) She's an outsider because she's NOT a writer. That means she's solely a reader; she doesn't toggle between reading like a reader and reading like a writer/editor. She gets immersed in the story and can truthfully tell me if I've accomplished the trick of transporting her to another world. Having said all that, she caught a plot hole that NONE of my other, more experienced Betas caught.

THE DIFFERENT GENRE
Jenny Herrera is a very talented writer who doesn't write in my genre (well, she's thinking about it - J! come over to the YA dark side!) This is important because she questions genre tropes that it sometimes becomes too easy to fall into. The love triangle, the frenemy, the distant parents. She probes these tropes with a sharp stick, making sure they aren't just made of cardboard but of fleshed out characters. She also has a wicked 'spidey' sense that ferrets out when things are too...convenient.

THE ONE THAT DOESN'T WRITE LIKE YOU (a)
Kerri Maniscalco is a wonderful writer who has a fluid, expansive style. She's so good at feelings and interiority that you feel like her characters are sitting next to you, telling you their secrets. This is not my writing style, however. K's feedback is often about putting in more, showing more. She's excellent at spotting places where I *thought* I conveyed a message, but it's not on the page.

THE ONE THAT DOESN'T WRITE LIKE YOU (b)
Renee Ahdieh kicks ass. Her writing is glorious - sharp and spare as a knife. There's never a sag in the action, the pacing is meticulous. This isn't my writing style either - but with R's feedback, I'm able to pare down repetitiveness and make my writing sleeker. Between Kerri and Renee, I'm able to find a balance that suits my style perfectly.

THE ALLY
You need a team of rivals, but you also need an ally. In my case this is my husband and my mom. My mom because the world in my book is one she understands (her own mother and grandmother were curanderas - healers in their native Uruguay.) And because she was able to remind me that, whatever happens with this book, just writing it was an accomplishment. And she said it made her laugh, which made me so happy. My husband was the last to read my book and the last to comment. He knows how important this book has become to me, how much of my heart and hopes are tied up in it. And he's the first to say, "Good job, honey. What's next?" Because he knows that this book, even though I poured myself into it until I wondered if there was anything else left, is only one book on a continuum. There's more to write. ONWARD.

I am so grateful to my betas for letting me tap into their prodigious talents and wit.

Who's on your team of rivals?

The Writing Kind

Writers are kind. Let's go from that starting point. Yes, there is jealousy, pettiness and drama (and here, I'm only talking about myself) but there is so much kindness out there, it's a little staggering.

Writing is hard. It's not Stephen Hawking hard, but it is soul-baring hard. When you write (and send your little boat of words out into the world) you are pretty damn naked. You wrote it and now others will judge - whether it's crit partners, beta readers, agents, publishers or whomever. You write, others read - and reading equals judgement (it has to.) So it's a scary proposition to put your writing out there. What I've found in the last three years of being part of the online writing community writ large is that kindness is the watchword.

Writers read for each other. They blog about each other. They retweet and encourage and help with pitch contests and recommendations. Part of our work is in helping others know what we know, reaching a hand behind and pulling others up, saying this is what I did, maybe that helps you.

My writing friend Jenny Herrera sent me a Writing Kind. She didn't wait for me to get a book deal or wait for a book launch or anything seminal. She sent me a care package when I finished writing a book. A simple thing I did and a really kind thing she did.
here's what was in the package:

• a batch of popcorn-chocolate chip cookies that she baked (which my kids ate most of)
• a writing book that reminds me to never lose HOPE.
• note cards/bookplates
• a cool pin (with cartoon birds on it, which eldest stuck to her backpack)
• a CD she burned for me of some of her fav songs (and these have become some of my favs)
• a note basically saying that she was proud of me for finishing.

That's it. Simple, not too extravagant, but priceless in what it did for my spirit. 

I'm going to pay that forward to another writing friend. Someone who is fighting the good fight drafting her WIP and someone who has done a lot of good for other writers (myself included.) IT'S A SEKRIT! that's the point. 

So what I'm saying is this: 1) Find a writing friend who may need a little encouragement
2) Put together a care package that will make them feel the warm & fuzzies 3) send it to them now - don't wait until they 'achieve' something - they've already achieved a lot. Celebrate now. 

I'm calling this stealth act of baked goods & encouragement The Writing Kind. 
And I'm buying Jenny a gigantic three-umbrella drink when I see her this summer.

How have you been Writing Kind? And who's been Writing Kind to you?

Community of Writers and Un Cortado Save the Day

You may know I have a friend in Tylenol PM. I've been having trouble sleeping for about two years, on and off. That's right, just at the time when I left gainful employment and decided raising kids and writing books would somehow make me feel all right.

Because it's so hard for me to sleep, I shun caffeine, the sleep destroyer. I drink decaf or tea or I drink juice. I don't do leaded. Unless it's a cortado. A cortado is a dreamy coffee beverage that's espresso 'cut' with foamy milk. I know Starbucks and Italians have other names for it, but in Uruguay, where I first encountered them, ordering un cortado and un sandwiche caliente at La Pasiva is a recipe for happiness.

Yesterday I met with my friends for Uruguayan Pizza, faina and cortados. Last night I paid for it by staring at the blinking time read-out on my cable box as it crept through the early morning.

But then the advice I'd gotten from my writing pals (when I whined and sniveled about not knowing what the heck to do with Fin now that I'd gotten him on the road to the END) started to reverb in my head, round and round, especially Lyra's advice (jump out of sequence and write the scene you do know) and Laura's advice (write Fin the way you want him to be, then go back and make him that way). Though this advice seems pretty simple on the surface, it was seismic to me. And last night, or rather this morning, I wrote 1000 words, three earlier scenes and a scene of huge conflict. Now that I see that I'm 'there' I'm not afraid anymore about how I'm going to get there.

Thanks girls!

What gets you under, over or through the writing 'Wall'?