One of the hardest parts of the writing process is waiting for your beta readers to finish beta reading. You’ve written the story (or book), and you’ve finally found people willing to read it, but you (probably) aren’t paying them. That means you’re on their schedule. 

For the BDSM romance novel, I have a friend who is knowledgeable about weightlifting so I asked her to take a look at the book with an eye toward any errors I may have made in the weightlifting/fitness competition scenes. I don’t know how fast she reads, and I don’t know how much free time she has, but she agreed to read the draft for me. 

So now I wait. And I try not to nudge her too much. I’m hopeful she can finish the book by the end of August; my goal is to release it next year, preferably before GASP. I can’t do anything else on it, though, because while I do have notes to myself I’m not going to be doing any more editing until I’m sure the content is right. I’d hate to think I’m done and then have to go back and make more changes. 

If one of your writer friends asks you to beta-read a book, and you agree to do it, make sure you have enough time to complete it in a timely fashion — a month or less is usually a good enough amount of time. And don’t stop halfway through — that happened with one of the beta readers for the Lizzie book (whose title I’m getting closer and closer to settling on); she read the first six chapters, and then I heard nothing afterward for weeks. If you start beta-reading, and then stop, the writer has to find a new beta reader who will start from the beginning. Then the wait begins all over again. 

Look, I get it: beta-reading an entire novel is quite an undertaking — especially for long ones like fantasy tomes (the BDSM romance novel is only 80,000 words). Don’t say you can do it unless you can truly commit to finishing it. Otherwise your writer friend will be left waiting forever.