Once you’ve written and rewritten, there will come a point–early or late, depending on your personality, when you must have readers. Early: I love to write and immediately read aloud what I’ve written. I find I have not got nearly any idea what I’ve written until I hear it with an audience. Scrawls on the page spring new dimensions, take shape, make sense. Later, a group of readers tackling a whole novel manuscript, coming together to find the commonalities and differences in their responses, is so eye opening, so revealing, as to be an absolute necessity. It provides focus and direction if your readers are strong and you trust them. It provides distance and perspective–the book or story comes alive as something separate from you and your long labor. Reading for the other writers in the group will teach you as much if not more than their critiques of your work. And a community of readers is the best place in the world to inhabit, isn’t it? It’s usually where we started, what got us into this writing business in the first place.

A Practical Alphabet for Writers: Find all the letters so far at https://bookwritingworld.com/blogs/