Quote:
Originally Posted by gandor62
Posting manuscripts into a forum and letting other people be part of your hobby would be a start. At least you would have satifaction when someone says that "your book is awesome."
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I'm not sure I would be comfortable doing that myself. You'd have to accept someone with very different ideas ripping it to pieces, or posting a rewrite that makes you unhappy. Criticism and editing are a part of writing, but it's lot more painful in public once you've invested a lot in your creation already. A public forum might be a good way to try out ideas, turns of phrase, and so on but I'd hesitate to post anything that took more than a few days of work. (Forums like this are more like a brainstoring session, with ideas being thrown about for feedback *before* too much has been invested in them, in the expectation that feedback will help develop them).
Even worse, you might see what you've spend weeks or months on appearing elsewhere with minor revisions, and someone else taking credit for it. I've been there.
That's just (a highly edited version of) my gut reaction which surprised me a bit, frankly. I would have to say that it would be important to ensure there was something like the impersonality of judgement and protection of material that should exist with a reputable agent/editor/publisher. That might involve a data trail of who reviewed what. Anonymity of the reviewers and authors (often the case in academic paper reviews) would result in more objective but critical feedback, but hopefully not to the point of traumatizing the beginning writer. Some kind of multiple rating system might help to prevent bloodbaths by perfectionist reviewers who are more interested in nit-picking than making constructive suggestions. Or maybe authors could rate reviewers by helpfulness, to select those who are best at this level. (Of cource writer ratings of revewers would have to be combined with the rating the reviewer gave the writer, to balance helpfulness scores against the tendency to select those that give positive reviews.