Special Friends with Helping Hands

I had a lot of help with fine tuning my story, The Tale of Ole Green Eyes. I initially began with my good friend, Linda Brown, who’s a published author. She suggested I use her editor. Jan Molnar-Fitzgerald taught me a lot of things on showing instead of telling in my story writing.

After she and I got through editing my manuscript, I sent it to my friend,  Dawn, who hosts a writing group who in turned gave it another woman in the group critique. She gave some important tips like clarifying certain points in my story I hadn’t thought of that make perfect sense to rework.

The last group of people who helped were my pen palling moms of small children and my good high school friend, Deborah Wilson-Johnson, who teaches young children. Deborah and her second grade class were instrumental in providing wonderful advice in directing my story. I couldn’t have done this without these guys. Thanks ladies and a special thank-you to all of Mrs. Johnson’s students.

Creative Writing takes laborious steps to get that polished piece of work you want and in the end, you’ll be so happy you put forth the extra effort. I know I was very pleased with the outcome of The Tale of Ole Green Eyes.

Do you have a second pair of eyes reading  your work-in-progress stories? How valuable is this service to you? What sort of advice would you give to new authors?