Just a school of writer's thought...
Hi Sunbreaker2!
Really I'm an unpublished writer, so for what it's worth... You're doing good already by speaking out your plan and direction with your writing, great! I wish I'd started that way, simply getting your name and word out. I posted in Share Your Work about 3 times (watch for acronyms as many will just write "SYW" instead). Just keyword search "Share Your Work" and they have a password for that area in order to enter it, then you will see about 10 different genres writers post excerpts under. Over about a year period I posted about 3 times the start of my novel, early drafts of chapter one after I'd written my whole novel and was doing rewrites. Actually my novel kept "growing", expanding from 30,000 to now 61,000 words and SYW was very good for me - meaning my chapter one.
Even though I had little experience I also critiqued in SYW too and feel I did help with that added other eye on a work. A published writer, author of 3 novels and a creative writing professor, told me to get my story down first as when you try to tell others about your story before or while you're writing it the telling interferes with the subconscious process. Really there are many schools of thought out there, but he made a lot of sense to me. I have followed that rule. I'd thought originally with my novel that it was a novella and had "finished". Somehow my subconscious kept working way beyond what I thought it would. So really when it was a "novella" and growing unexpectedly I was getting crits on the important start of my story, so maybe I'm being hypocritical. Think of it though, you have your story idea and too many "cooks in the kitchen" can have an interfering effect at least before you've written your whole story.
Really though I've known my entire story from beginning to end even when it was a novella, but my protag's circumstances where enhanced as I lived my story. One Beta Reader (A "Beta Reader" is one who out of the goodness of their heart is willing to crit without asking the writer to crit their work in return, actually a random act of kindness.) I've also did a Beta Read of a whole novel for a writer in a writers group I'd attended at one time, yet he'd offered to read my "novella", so I didn't turn that down. Oh, word of advice too, make sure you know the genre and look at maybe a sample of a writer's work first if they want you to read their whole novel. I timed myself and worked 33 hours critiquing this guy's novel and it wasn't one I would have at all wanted to read. Back to this inspirational crit. The crit was my story seemed to start best in another area of my plot about 1/3rd the way into my story. I started to realize I needed to develop and expand with my protag's character arch with that event that was actually part of a subplot. Beyond me that event and subsequent effects to my whole story ended up giving my novel even greater strength and led me on a story element I worked on for several months. I hope I helped with my meanderings here in some small way. I hope everything works out for you!
Carpe Diem!
Winfred