4. Do you have children age of your readers? Ask parents if you could provide a manuscript for them to read and get their feedback.

5. If this is a book that is read to children (they are too young to read yet). Find parents that frequently read to their child and have children that age. Ask them if they would read your book to them and fill out a questionnaire about their reaction. Offer to send them an autographed complimentary copy.

6. Don’t forget to place this test information and results into your marketing plan for your agent/publisher. It does make world of different on if it is accepted.

7. How about a Cub Scouts or Girl Scouts group? Find a few leaders and ask for their help in your goal. A local community center director might also have some ideas for how you can do same in their center.

Jump in middle of fray. Be in circle, not outside it. Don't be content being a mere spectator. Take a bite of everything life dishes out. Ray Bradbury wrote, "Tom Wolfe ate world and vomited lava. Dickens dined at a different table every hour of his life. Moliere, tasting society, turned to pick up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everywhere you look in literary cosmos, great ones are busy loving and hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, fun of loving and being loved, of moving and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto."

Attack writing with PASSION.

The kind of writing you produce will oftentimes reflect current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch words dance across your page.

Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. In her book, Writing Wave, Elizabeth Ayres wrote: "There's one thing your writing must have to be any good at all. It must have you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice -- you must be on that page. In end, you can't make magic happen for your reader. You can only allow miracle of 'being one with' to take place. So dare to be you. Dare to reveal yourself. Be honest, be open, be true...If you are, everything else will fall into place."

Copyright (c) 2004 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ