[stylist] Having Friends Read your Work

[Tessa]

Hi Vejas
This is very true. Last year I was at a class reunion and several people expressed interest in reading my work, I sent them material and have since heard back from one person. As you say life often gets in the way. The other issue is that friends in order to stay friends are sometimes hesitant to give you their honest perhaps unpleasant oppinion on what you wrote so they don't say anything. Unfortunately I'm not a short story writer for the most part. These days what I do is give people the first chapter of something and if I don't hear from them I don't send them anything else. Also I try to make it very clear that I want criticism, what they liked, what they didn't like and why. I think some people find this very hard to do, they just read and can't seem to get their heads around the idea that this is a work in progress and that believe it or not the author might be wrong and that feedback even if it seems unpleasant is welcomed. 
A few years ago I was talking to a person who wanted to write, I spent considerable time critiquing a piece of her work with the expectation that she would do the same for me, and I told her specifically that I did not want a comments limited to that was great. Unfortunately I got two lines of exactly that. A lady in our local writing group says she spends at least an hour or two critiquing someone's work and is extremely disappointed when she realizes that person may have spent 10 minutes on hers. But I guess that's how it goes sometimes. 
One idea you might try is to add a list of questions at the end of your story for your reader to think about, something to get them started and give them an idea the sort of thing you want to know about what they read.
Tessa