Show don’t tell Writing Podcast: Episode #43 The Value of Critique Partners with Julie Artz

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In this week’s episode, Suzy chats with book coach Julie Artz about her Critique Partner matching program called “CP Meet Cute” (register here!) They discuss the different types of people who read and offer critique, including alpha readers, beta readers, critique partners, book coaches, editors, and agents. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is, this is the episode for you. Tune in to find out how to take critique and the value of a critique partner for your writing journey. 

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Episode Transcript (unedited)

Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to Show. Don’t Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vidori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction nonfiction that are gonna wow your readers broken down step by step. We’re gonna explore writing techniques. I’m gonna show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers’ careers that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

And I’m also gonna coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you’re just starting out, you’re drafting your first book, you’re editing, or you’re currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show’s gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn’t even know you needed, but you definitely do.

I’m so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams, [00:01:00] and you’re gonna also have some fun doing it. Let’s dive in. Hi Julie. I’m so glad that you’re here. All the shows today.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Julie Artz: Yeah, thanks for having me, Susie.

Suzy Vadori: You’re welcome. We’ve been talking about doing this one for a while and we’ve even been together, but we are doing this today over Zoom and we’re recording this on Valentine’s Day. It’s gonna be released at some point in the future, but happy Valentine’s Day.

Yeah. To you too. It’s the perfect topic to talk about on a day of love and relationships. Exactly. Relationships and critique partners. And yeah, it is a really different kind of relationship that writers could have. And I know that you are super passionate about this process. We’re gonna break it down for our writers.

What the heck is it? Critique partner. What is this all about? Kick us off here, Julie, what is the critique partner? What are you talking about today? Yeah, so critique partners or a critique group, [00:02:00] one or more people that you basically trade writing with to get feedback and help and encouragement on your writing journey.

And just a little bit about my own backstory. At a certain point I had taken some time off from writing when my kids were little. I was ready to write again when they went back to school and when they started school, basically. I found, I was living in Finland, so I didn’t know anybody who was writing an English language, who was even remotely close to my time zone.

So I was writing, but I realized it wasn’t as much fun. It was a little bit lonely, it was a little bit dark. It was the wintertime in the far north. And I was feeling just bummed. And I was like, what I need is just like some buddies to talk to, to maybe swap work with, to maybe be like, is this good or am I just completely off and left field?

And so I went about a, a really deliberate process of trying to figure out how to find critique partners and I had some really good success. Fast [00:03:00] forward 15 years later now, a couple of years ago, I realized. That I wasn’t the only person that was looking for critique partners and that I probably could recreate the things that I had done to find my amazing critique partners that I have now, and make it into a program that could help writers be connected with like-minded people who are writing in the same genre and age category and really help create connection.

So this was in the aftermath of COVID and a lot of us being at home and everything else. I launched this program that I called CP Meet Cute critique partner, meet Cute, and as romance and Meet Cute is when the two love interests meet. And so as a hat tip to all the romance that I read during the pandemic, that’s what I call the program.

So we’ve been running for about three years now. I run it a couple of times a year and have literally matched hundreds of writers with potential critique partner matches. And we have just a ton of success stories. I’ve learned a lot from this process too, to even further [00:04:00] refine what it means to be a good critique partner and how to set your group up for critique partner success.

Awesome. Okay, so we’re gonna dive into all of that, but a critique partner basically. So I love this and I love that it’s Valentine’s Day. That’s like serendipity or something that we were talking about, meet Cutes on Valentine’s Day. Of course we are. But. Critique partner. All that is exchanging writing with another writer usually and giving each other feedback and egging each other on.

Is that sort of. Yeah, absolutely. And there can be all kinds of different formats. You can have people that are in your local community that you meet with face to face. I have a group that meets at a local coffee shop and bookstore once a month here in Fort Collins, which is really amazing. I. It can also be online people.

When I was living in Finland, I met up with some people through a couple of different online writing organizations and conferences and became critique partners with them, and they were literally spread all over the world. And we still trade pages today, [00:05:00] many of us. That were abroad have moved back to the United States now because it was all English speaking writers, all North American home base writers.

But yeah, so there, so that you can have, you can re meet weekly, you can meet monthly, you can meet online, you can meet in person. But the idea is you could exchange a whole thing or like one page. Yeah. And like a whole manuscript depend like you make the rules. The idea is you exchange, you meet up with somebody on a regular basis or once or whatever, and it’s reciprocal, right?

It’s a relationship where you provide feedback and they provide feedback. It’s different from beta readers, right? Your beta readers might not be writers at all. They might just be people that enjoy the genre and age category that you’re writing in, but a critique partner there is that idea of that reciprocity.

That’s a really good point, Susie. The idea is that even if I’m between books, so I don’t need feedback right now, I might read something for my critique partner because they’re getting it ready for their agent or for their editor. Or if we’re [00:06:00] both writing at the same time, maybe we’re trading a chapter every week or just doing accountability or there’s all different kinds of ways that writers can support each other and, and really the most important thing is just being really clear about what your goals are and then communicating those goals to the critique partner.

Because it is a relationship and, and we love our book babies, right? They’re very precious to us. So we wanna be careful and deliberate and clear in our communication with anybody that we share that work with. Absolutely. And so what’s in it for the writer? Okay, so I am going to, sorry, I, I love sharing pages and oftentimes writers will ask me like, I want somebody to read my stuff, but why would I help them?

So what do the writers get out of it that actually provide the critique? Because I think this is something that people miss. They’re considering whether or not a critique partnership is for them. They’re like, oh, I want somebody to give me feedback, but why don’t I give anybody else feedback? Because there’s a lot of advantages here too.

So can you like share with us [00:07:00] in your view, what’s in it for the person giving the feedback? Why are they doing this? ’cause generally this is a free relationship, right? It’s reciprocal. There’s no payment exchanged, all of those things. So what’s in it for the person giving the feedback? Yeah, that’s such a great question.

The in truth, we learn more about our own writing from critiquing someone else’s than we do from looking at our own work day after day. It’s really hard as writers to have objectivity about our own work. So I, what I find all the time, both when I’m with my critique groups, but also when I’m coaching that I write something down, be really clear about the character’s motivation here, and then something goes in my spidey sense tingles.

Like, oh, Julie, you need to be clear about the motivation in your own character story that you’re working on right now. Like you start to give yourself advice through critiquing other people’s work, or you see how they, how they handle some aspect of craft, and then you’re like, oh, this is different how I than how I did it.

But it really works. Another really [00:08:00] important piece I think of writing with, working with people who are writing the same genre and age category is understanding those genre conventions, right? Like you can see how people are influenced by other major works in the genre age category, recent movies, television shows, that kind of thing.

You can see how that comes across it on the page, and it’s way easier to analyze someone else’s work than it is to analyze your own so you can learn. So much by critiquing for other people. Yeah, I totally agree. As a professional, I couldn’t agree with you more. The more you see and the more you see it.

Because it’s really difficult too, when you only are reading polished works, right? You’re only reading finished books and then you look at your own work and you’re like, woo, I don’t have what it takes. ’cause you’re comparing your first draft to the finished book. It’s neat to see how all writers, by the way, every single writer, nobody publishes the first draft.

If you do, I don’t know. I wouldn’t [00:09:00] imagine that you have many readers, but No. But yeah, like it’s nice to know that there are things and that it does evolve and start to get, and everybody’s different. I have writers that I work with who. Prose is really great on the first draft, but they don’t really have any world building.

Or I have people who, their first draft is really strong on dialogue, but it’s not well rounded. And so it’s like really cool to get to notice what other people are doing and have that discussion about process and watch it evolve as well, and know that you’re not the only one and you can learn from that.

It’s so true because when we read a really great book and then we come back to our messy first drafts, it can feel like sad trombone, wah, oh no, this is so messy. How am I ever gonna get it here? But seeing other people’s first drafts and seeing that evolution as they go through the, the stages of revision can be really just helpful in normalizing that it takes multiple revisions to get something really reader ready and that it’s okay.

If your first draft is messy, if everything [00:10:00] isn’t polished, if you say have really good dialogue, but have completely left out all the setting detail and just have talking heads, that’s how a lot of my first drafts are. Right. So exactly. The character voices. Yeah, exactly. But then know that’s gotta be grounded out at some point.

But, okay. Hey, I gotta ask, there was love coming up with the questions here and I like, I didn’t tell Julie what I was gonna ask her, but I gotta ask. Okay. You’re an editor, you’re a book coach, this is how you make your living. So for people that are listening here and going, cool, I’m just gonna get some critique partners.

Maybe I don’t need an editor anymore. Like, why did you put this together? Does this replace the need for the editor or what’s your feeling on that? I absolutely think it’s a both, and obviously I wouldn’t be putting myself out of a job with this, with this free program. Well, you’ll might, I know you, you just like, you love helping writers.

You might do that. I do. I love helping writers, but I do think too that there’s a real value in fresh eyes. I even encourage my clients that I’m working with one-on-one or in my group program, the story [00:11:00] matters mentorship. I encourage them to also have critique partner relationships because the getting that.

Extra set of eyes and working through something with your critique partners first, before it goes to your book coach or your editor or your agent, is really important, right? Because you want the pros that you’re working with, whether that’s a book coach or or your editor agent, to be able to help you really elevate what you’re doing and.

Figure out all that low hanging fruit stuff with your critique partners in advance. Brainstorm with them because you’re not paying them money to figure these things out. Give them your messy first drafts. Give it a proofread to make sure that it hangs together and it makes sense before you send it to your critique partners.

You know that you have a little wiggle room to, to figure things out, to brainstorm, to talk things through. And you don’t always wanna do that with the writing professionals that are part of your journey just because they don’t maybe have time or you don’t wanna, you don’t wanna pay ’em for it. So I think it’s definitely, [00:12:00] I think Cadillac version when you’re, when you’re paying for somebody to read 2, 3, 5 drops, right?

Yeah, I totally agree. And I just wanted to clarify that for newer writers that are coming in, a lot of times they get a little bit confused. We’re throwing around all these terms, we’re saying beta readers, which are readers, and you wanna do that last really? Or like after you’ve already had some other writers taking a look.

Writing relationships, these critique partner relationships can really help you elevate it. And then, as Julie said, you can then work with a coach, an editor, all these professional people who have seen thousands of books and can help you really hone it in. Take it as far as you can on your own, because what you don’t want is for them to be teaching you just the basics or letting you know that something fundamentally isn’t working, and having to focus on these big picture items and not really hone in and just be refining with you, which is awesome.

I know when I was working full-time and wrote my first book. I did look, I love critiquing, I love groups. [00:13:00] It’s how Julie and I stay connected. ’cause we’re like the only two extroverted people in the writing space. No, just joking. But we might be some of the most extroverted people maybe in the writing space.

And it’s usually a joke when we get together with lots of other people. They’re like, oh, Susie and Julie, we get grouped together a lot. Our names get linked because we have a lot of energy. So I love, love being in groups and that gives me energy. And working with writers gives me energy. And for some people that’s pretty draining.

But when I was working full-time, I was in this space where it was all I could do to find time for my own writing, and I knew that I couldn’t, I couldn’t give equal time to other people’s writing, if that makes sense. So there’s a time and a place if you have that time and space critiquing other people’s work as a great way to learn.

I didn’t always have that space, and so I had to be really judicious with how many. People’s work I critique. And then somehow I missed it so much. I made it my full-time job to literally read people’s work and get feedback, which gives me [00:14:00] so much joy. But depending on where you’re at in your journey, make sure that if you’re deciding how you’re gonna go forward or whether you’re ready for this is the right time for critique, partner relationship, make sure you can handle it like that.

You have the time to give other writers that you can read their pages. ’cause Julie and I will tell you as. This is our job. It is work. And you can’t just leave it to the last minute and give them 10 seconds of feedback. That’s not what this relationship is. Yeah, and that’s why communication is so important when you’re forming critique partner relationships or critique groups.

Because for example, if you’re working full-time and you’re super, super, super busy. You’re maybe only gonna have time to at best trade, like one chapter, five or 10 pages once a month, or even less frequently than that. You don’t wanna be paired with someone who is raring to go writing full-time, wants to be trading pages every week because it’s gonna lead to frustration for both of you.

I. And at the same time, I think it’s really [00:15:00] important to be honest with yourself about where you are in your writing process. Like I have a beloved and amazing critique group that meets every Tuesday, and we have been together for many years, although a few members have swapped out over time. Right now I’m not bringing them pages because I was spending a little bit too much time going back and polishing the first half of my manuscript, and I need to write the second half before I do any more polishing in the first half.

So even though I’m still a part of the group, I didn’t leave the group, I’m just not bringing pages right now. I still show up. I offer feedback on, on the other people’s pages, and I know that when I get to the end, which I’m hoping to do by the end of next month. That I’ll be able to start bringing pages again because I’ll be at the right point to be getting feedback and going back and polishing those pages.

But if, if you’re drafting and it’s gonna completely derail your process to get feedback, now’s not the right time for having a critique group, right? So maybe don’t look for a critique partner [00:16:00] from CP Mecu or. From your local writing group or whatever, maybe just look for an accountability partner that’ll check in and say, okay, have you wr, have you written this week?

How many pages have have you written? How are you feeling about the writing process? And get that support in other ways, because I have definitely seen writers get derailed by feedback too early in the process. You can spend, yeah. Weeks, months, years, polishing your first page. But if you haven’t written the last page, you probably don’t know what the final form of that first page is gonna be right through until you find it.

Then you can go back and revise with a critique partner or a critique group’s help. Absolutely. So I guess what I’m hearing you say, and that’s makes a lot of sense, I totally agree, is that it’s not always the right time to have a critique partner or a critique group and take it to them when you have that time and space to both.

Consider that feedback as well as be able to give the feedback. Yeah. When I run CP meet cute people, fill out a survey that just gives me some basic [00:17:00] information about their genre, the age category, but also their experience level. Is this their first time in a critique group or if they had critique groups in the past?

Also, do you wanna, we meet weekly or do you wanna meet monthly? I try to use that to put people together that want the same sort of frequency. Because if you just have the I basic idea for your story, but you’re not actually actively writing it yet, you might not wanna join a weekly critique group where the expectation is that you’re bringing 10 pages every week.

So knowing where you are in the process. That’s not to say that you can’t bring an outline or a synopsis or a pitch or something like that to critique group ’cause I highly recommend that and highly recommend using your critique partners for just general brainstorming, figuring out co comparative titles and that sort of stuff as well.

It doesn’t have to just be reading pages, but making sure that you’re at a sort of similar stage in the process as the people that you’re gonna be swapping with will make it easier for it to be a good match and to avoid frustration. Thank you so much for [00:18:00] doing that work. You’re literally taking applications and then matching people your services free and we’ll tell you guys how to, how to find Julie’s cp.

Meet cute down there. It’s awesome. What are your best tips or what makes a good critiquer? So if I’m like, oh my gosh, I don’t think I could be in a critique partnership because I have nothing to offer. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I just need tons of help. What are your best tips for being a good critiquer?

I hope, because we’re all writers, that we’re all also readers, and so we’re thinking about story in that critical way, whether it’s just, I liked this book, or I didn’t like this book, or, I’m gonna finish this book, or I’m gonna put this book down. You’re at least absorbing story on some level. So I would argue that every writer has something to offer in terms of critique.

One of the things that I see that’s a real pitfall for people that are brand new to critique groups. They feel nervous. Everybody wants to feel like they’re pulling their weight, like they’re giving enough feedback and so they start [00:19:00] like correcting typos and putting commas in and that sort of stuff, and that level of feedback.

For most people, unless they’re about to go self-publish their book or about to send it to their editor for final revisions or whatever. Probably that level of feedback is not gonna help. So I try to put myself, if I’m struggling with what do I wanna say about this, I can’t really decide what kind of feedback I wanna give, put myself into a reader’s shoes and be like.

Did I like this? Did I not like it? Which parts are slow? Which parts were really exciting to me and focus on that kind of big picture level. Where was I confused? What questions do I have that are the kind of confusion questions, not the good curiosity questions that make you wanna keep turning pages, but those.

Confusing questions. Wait, I thought that, I thought that he, he was in love with, with Susie and now you’re saying he’s in love with Julie. What’s love with going on here with Susie and Julie? Everybody love us both. Julie, love us both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s awesome. [00:20:00] Awesome advice because I think a lot of times, and I see this as well, you might think you have nothing to offer, or I also see this when.

Newer writers in particular come in or even experienced writers, you think that your job is to tear it to shreds, right? You think that your job is to find something wrong with it. And for me, you know, uh, that my whole business and my whole coaching side and the way that I work with writers is always in my incredibly supportive, positive voice.

That doesn’t mean I’m gonna slow smoke up your butt and tell you that it’s the sunshine and roses. If it’s not working, it just means. Be respectful. And also if it’s not working, then why and take your own feelings of it out of it. So what advice would you give a critiquer in terms of where you fall on that spectrum?

Is your job? The word critique literally means to find problems. I don’t know what the actual definition is, but yeah, it’s literally to find problems, but it isn’t really, it’s to respond to the writing and [00:21:00] to encourage, especially partnerships and that relationship. If you’re gonna be going in and just finding all the negatives, you’re probably not gonna be with that critique partnership very long.

Right. We. I think for the most part, all writers are looking for the kind of feedback that will help them get better. And what doesn’t help you get better is to be torn to shred so badly that you stop writing and never do it again. Yeah. So there’s finding that right balance of trying to offer something that’s gonna be helpful and actionable, but keeping people’s feelings in mind because the, these are relationships.

Right. That’s why I use all the relationship language in CP mEq because I want people to be really be thinking. It’s not some anonymous person on the, on the, on the page that has just emailed you 10 pages to take a look at. It’s a real person who has the same feelings of love and fear and concern about their story that you have about yours, and keeping that in mind all the time will help you.

So I think about what kind of feedback do I receive that I [00:22:00] find really helpful. Then that’s the kind of feedback that I try to give and raising things as questions and I’m curious about this or this, I’m not sure about this. Instead of, this is wrong or I don’t get this or, and the thing is, once you hit a rhythm with someone, once you get to know them a lot better, you probably can up the ante a little bit in terms of the amount of critique a offering.

Yeah, you can be a little bit more blunt once somebody gets to know you, but if it’s the first time you’re trading pages, I say ease into the relationship and get to know each other’s style first. See what they can handle. Yeah, and what’s gonna be helpful to them, because again, if it’s your very first story and it’s your very first draft, the kind of critique that you need is different than if you’re really working hard to get something ready to go to your editor and they’re on a publication schedule, and it’s gonna be published in six months.

So you’ve got to get that. Staying polished to a high shine. Those are very different scenarios, which is why again, that communication is so [00:23:00] important. Yeah. I have some friends that I trade ugly first drafts with, and our rules about ugly first drafts are alpha readers. I call them alpha readers, right?

Yeah. Like before, before anybody else. This is like duck check before critique and we will say, but you, there’s a level of trust only. Yeah. I only want. Cheerleading. I only want you to tell me the things that you like because I’m feeling like it’s hard to get things already. Know I’m already hard on enough on myself.

I already know what’s wrong with it. I just want to know what’s good. Yeah, I love that. Tell me something. Tell me something good so that I can keep going and not give up. Like that kind of feedback is actually just as important as discovering the major plot hole that, that you’re able to fix at the 11th hour because you had a really good critique partner.

They’re both vital parts of the journey. And I think that’s, I really love that Julie. And I would also add, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this critique or offer advice that you know to be true and not just what you think to be true or what you feel like should change. And I think that’s where I started really finding big difference about the [00:24:00] feedback.

I started out with critiquing and beta reading and editing, and then fell backwards into coaching. ’cause people are like this helpful thing I’ve ever done. Can I pay you to do this on a, like, it was a weird thing. I’m like. Is that a thing? Do people want this? And this is a decade ago when book coaching wasn’t as common, but really, if you are working, I love how you said it was both.

And you work with an editor, you work with a book coach, you work with a critique partner because you can bring those learnings that you’ve done, those studying, those courses that you’ve taken, the reading that you’ve done. You can show the, I’m all about the show. Don’t tell. We’re on the show. Don’t Tell podcast.

You could show them how that works in their writing. Hopefully your critique partner has done other things. Maybe they’ve done the same things, so then the same courses or have studied with the same people, then you guys have a common language to be able to discuss things. I have got one critique group that I’ve worked with everybody in it, and they critique each other and they call themselves the Susie Vidori enthusiasts.[00:25:00]

If you’re listening, tell me that you heard this, that Susie Badori enthusiasts is the name of their critique root. And they love it because they have all these little quirky things that I teach that they can be like, oh, this is that, and this is that, and it’s different language. Or you may be learning new things from other people, but try to bring in your learnings and to learn from that process.

I. So true. It you, what you absolutely don’t wanna do is just start correcting somebody’s story on the page. It would be better if you added this character. Then you, you literally, you guys kept, see me. My shoulders are up around my ears right now, just even thinking about that. Right? It could be danger.

Right, but instead that you can, you could phrase it as a question, do you need another character that’s gonna be a good counterpart to this character that’s gonna create tension or conflict? Phrase it as a question that’s a lot easier to swallow. And also for the writer to feel like I. Okay. I have the choice whether I want to [00:26:00] take this piece of advice or not.

And ultimately we have the choice whether we’re gonna take or leave any advice that we get even from our book coaches. Right? Like at the of the day. Absolutely. You’re the God into your story Listeners, you’re the God of your own story. And I was gonna talk about that in a second. What are your best tips?

I wanna get to that though, ’cause it’s really important, but what are your best tips for those who are getting critiqued? We’re getting into that already, like. How do we receive this feedback? Because sometimes it can hurt, right? Or it can if you’re new to receiving feedback, really great. Like how, what are your best tips for what have you seen working?

So I have a post on my substack from actually quite a few years ago about the seven stages of writerly grief, and it’s all about what happens when you get that feedback. And this is my own interpretation of what happens when I receive feedback. I get feedback from an agent, from an editor, from one of my critique partners.

And here’s what I think. Number one, no, you [00:27:00] are 100% wrong. You didn’t get my story at all. You don’t understand me. Also, you hate me. I’m a terrible writer, and I quit. So that’s like the first, that’s the first knee-jerk reaction that I think secretly almost every writer has when they get feedback on their work that doesn’t say.

This is the best story I’ve ever read. No comments. But then when you go back, maybe it’s 15 minutes later, maybe you go have a cup of tea or take a walk or pet your cat. I’ve got a cat in my lap right now, so that’s why that’s on my mind. And you go back and you’re like. Oh, okay. They have some points there.

It’s okay. And you go through those stages. By the time I get to the, to my third or fourth read through of the feedback that I get, I’m like, they’re pretty smart. And also I have a plan for how to address this and I rock. This story is amazing. And so you can go from that. I hate this. You’re wrong. I quit all the way through to, I’m empowered and I can go do it.

Just by reading through the feedback a [00:28:00] few times and taking a few breaks and being like trying to regain that objectivity because it’s, it is hard. We love our stories and we’re really committed to them, and we do the best job that we can with them, and we also make mistakes and then our critique partners point them out and then we have to deal with the feelings that come from that.

But we can deal with it. Feelings. Yes. And we can get back to the, yeah. Stupid feelings. Stupid. Stupid feelings. Stupid feelings on Valentine’s Day. They don’t have any place in writing, right? No. We all have feelings. And my favorite part about you explaining that, we’ll link to that, that seven levels of grief, was it called?

Mm-hmm. We’ll link to that in the show notes so that people can grab it. But my favorite part about that was you talked about petting your cat and then you’re like, my cat is right here. And that’s why I said it out loud. And that is what I love about you, Julie. We just get it like straight. It’s so good.

Okay. Yeah, I, I used, I have a client who actually shared with me that she, when she was writing, she coached with me. And so she was sending me 20 pages at a time and getting the feedback and she would get it back the day before we met. ’cause [00:29:00] I, there’s never any surprises on my front. I don’t wanna shock you because I don’t want you to go through those levels of grief in front of me.

That’s a waste of a waste of our meeting. We’ve gotta get through that before we meet. And she said, yeah, so I get the pages. This is what she told me. I get the pages and then I literally grumble around my house and swear at you for about an hour, and then I take a deep breath. I realize you’re right.

Like it’s exactly that. And she shared that. Yeah. Her husband knows that when she gets the pages, she’s gonna need a minute. She’s gonna be really mad. And I’m like, she shared this with me after we’d been working together for six months and she’d written most of the book and she’d never like. Express and she laughed about it and was like, whatever.

I know it’s just a moment in time, but I like, I know that I’m sending hatred out into the world and hopefully they get through it and then, yeah, she ended up being able to finish the book and it was awesome. What would, yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s really common. I think with my clients, I often, if I send them feedback and I get a [00:30:00] response from them within an hour, I almost just don’t even read it because I think it’s probably like a panic.

Processing sort of email. And then I know when we jump on Zoom, they’re gonna have actual actionable questions for me. Instead of the, oh no, I can’t do this. I have to quit. I give up. Because I have had those feelings too. So I know that they’re sometimes normal. Not enjoyable, but normal Part of the writing experience, it’s been a bit of an evolution, like to when Julie’s been coaching, just as long as I have, probably longer book coaching and.

It’s been a bit of an evolution for my process, but I do, I send the pages back the day before and whatever time I end up finishing them, like it might be end of day or whatever, but you have them back. The day before, and it’s not necessarily even 24 hours, but I don’t wanna send them back. Like even if I finish them three days before, I’m not gonna send them to you because then you’re way too far along that path.

You’ve already got all the solutions. You may have rewritten it and sent it back and want me to review it [00:31:00] again. It’s like that bright moment in time. It’s like that 12 to 24 hours. I need you to just be in that moment to get the most out of the feedback and the most out of our conversation, and to be the most helpful.

’cause if you’ve already had to work through all that on your own and you’ve spent three days spinning on it and coming up with a solution, you don’t need me anymore, which is fine. That’s awesome. But you’ve actually spent three days when we probably could have handled it in 30 minutes or an hour, right?

So yeah. Yeah. It’s like this weird moment in time. So yeah. How long it takes to go through those stages. Okay. One thing that I see a lot of times, and when clients come to me finally and they’re like, okay, I’m, I’m ready for an editor. I’m ready for a coach because I’ve been sending this out to Critiquers and literally get somebody telling me to change the beginning and somebody telling me to change the end and somebody to telling me to change the point of view and they get all this conflicting advice.

What’s your best advice for writers who get like all kinds of, what feels like completely different [00:32:00] advice from critique partners? I think it’s really common, unfortunately, because everybody, that’s one of the things, for example, that I love about my Tuesday group. We all have different strengths. So there’s one person who is always gonna be talking about world building.

That’s me, another person that’s really focused on plot, and another person that’s really good on character. And, and so we each bring something a little bit different, and sometimes that works really well, and sometimes it feels like it’s conflicting. If, if I’m like, no, the problem is world building and somebody else is, no, the problem is.

And somebody else says, oh, the problem is character. We can all be right. That’s that. I have, I love to tell this story. I entered a writing contest. This has been like probably about 10 years ago, where we got two sets of feedback on, on our pages. So it was for a conference. You submitted your first 25 pages of your manuscript, you got feedback back.

I got my two sets of feedback and one of them said the pacing of this is really slow. The other one said, the pacing on this is [00:33:00] really fast. Too fast. Oh gosh. And it was like, oh no. What am I gonna do? I don’t understand what to do about this. When I looked at their feedback, what I realized is they were both right.

The character motivation was off, which made it feel too rushed because they didn’t understand why the character was doing what it was doing. The person who said that it was too fast, and the one that said it was too slow, they felt it was too slow because again, they didn’t understand why the things on the page were happening.

Because the character motivation wasn’t clear. So I think part of the thing to do, it’s like a puzzle. When you get conflicting feedback, figure out what the common thread is, and it’s probably something that none of the three of them said, but that when you figure it out, that’s going to empower you to make the changes that are gonna really make the most difference in your story.

Yeah, and I bet I that, that’s actually my superpower is taking conflicting advice and figuring out what the common thread is. And Julie’s nodding her head. I know it’s your superpower too, because we’ve seen thousands and thousands of manuscripts, but when you are paired with a critique partner that has much less [00:34:00] experience, a lot of times immediately they try to give you a solution.

And so they’re giving you the solution or what their idea about how you should fix it is without really sharing with you. What they’re really experiencing, right? Julie said, maybe none of them actually said, I don’t understand what the heck your character’s doing. ’cause they don’t know how to take that next step.

They’re jumping right to the answer. So usually if you can take a step back, you can ask them right them, Hey, what was it that you’re reacting to? What are you trying to fix? And usually you can get to that answer. But I, when I come back, circle back to this like other point that Julie was making earlier, that when we’re quite ready to address, which was.

You don’t have to do any of it, right. You’re the God of your own story. And what’s your advice in terms of how you decide whether or not you move forward with the advice that a critique partner or an editor, quite frankly, gives you? I think that the important thing is to build up your confidence in your [00:35:00] own storytelling and your own voice so that you can take a piece of feedback and say, I don’t agree with the solution that they have given.

Here is a solution that I think is true to the heart of my story, and being able to implement that. I’m very suspicious. Whenever somebody gets feedback and they’re like, I’m throwing it all out. They were completely off base. Oh, I know. I have to do a rewrite or whatever. Yeah. Oh, I see. No, sorry, I jumped to the wrong conclusion.

No, the opposite. I, yeah, the opposite. You’re actually just saying, yeah, I get feedback and I’m not gonna take any of it, because they were clearly didn’t understand my genius. That’s when, again, my spidey sense tingles and I’m like, probably there’s something there that you need to do. You probably didn’t like the solution that they suggested because it wasn’t in line with the heart of your story, but there’s probably something there underneath that you need to address.

By the same token, you don’t want to. Constantly be rewriting your manuscript. Every time somebody says, what if you changed the genre? What if you added a point of view? What if you change it [00:36:00] from first person to third person? You need to be willing, so what they wanna do, not what you wanna extinguish.

Yeah. You need to be really deliberate. Yeah. About what your vision for the story is. And that’s the kind of thing that, that’s the part of the reason that I think having critique partners is really important. Because it gives you practice when the stakes are low so that you can push back. When you’re working with an agent or editor, ask anybody who’s worked with an agent or editor, you don’t accept every single, every single suggestion made.

You don’t have to, by the way. You don’t have to. Yeah, you don’t have to. That’s why the word, as long as you debt is our friend, right? Like we say, no, we’re not gonna do that. I have my reasons. You can’t do that for every single comment that they make, but you can do it for the big ones that you really care about.

So you get to practice that with your critique partners before you have to practice it with an industry professional where the stakes are much higher and if you push back too much, you can harm the relationship with the agent or editor. Right. But, but if you know what’s most important and are confident in the heart of your story, you can push back on the things that really matter.

Absolutely. And you can say, I hear you. [00:37:00] I understand. I think what you’re saying is this is not working. My solution for it. I don’t love the solution that you are suggesting. ’cause I don’t feel like my character would ever do that or whatever it is. Or I don’t want to do it. I don’t know. But here’s a different way that I’m thinking of solving that and what do you think?

And for writers that come back to me, sometimes they’re embarrassed and they’re like, you made this suggestion. I like to say that as an editor, I have to be brave and I have to guess and I have to get shot down sometimes because I will be like, Hey, what if your character said this? Or what if your character said that?

Or something better. And sometimes I’ll provide a suggestion to try to demonstrate to the writer what I’m talking about in terms of what might fix it. And it’s totally off base ’cause I don’t know enough about it. That should tell the writer one thing. Number one, understand what’s going on ’cause it’s not enough on your pages.

But number two, I do it on purpose because if they love what I put, great. Do that. If they [00:38:00] hate it and really think that it’s off, I like that even more. I have to have a thick skin about it because maybe they would be like, oh, they wouldn’t do this and therefore I automatically know what they would do.

And they go write that. Do it. So you’ve got this CP Meet queue. We’re gonna drop in the show notes how people can participate in the next round. It comes up a couple of times a year right now. What have been some of the outcomes of this program? Do you have any stories that you can share? I know you’re always sharing stories.

What’s going on like with people that actually experienced this critique process? Yeah, it, it’s been so surprising. I had no idea the first time that I ran it, which was back in 2022, what was gonna happen? Are people interested in this? Are they gonna sign up? Is it gonna be a disaster? And what I’ve actually found, I.

Is that it varies a little bit from round to round, but we do a survey follow up to see whether people found a match, and we’re [00:39:00] solidly two thirds to three quarters of the time people are finding a match. The groups are usually anywhere from three to five people and maybe all five of them don’t gel, but maybe they break into two groups or a couple of different pairs of people.

Find one person that they can work with out of the group. And in other cases, the whole group stays together and, and have been, have been meeting together now for a couple of years. I, I do, people do email me and say, I’m still with that critique partner. You match me within 2023. And I love hearing it because it’s just proof that all you need is a little gentle nudge to find your people.

And it can make such a huge difference in your writing journey to not feel like you’re doing it alone or flailing in the dark without anyone to help you or support you. What an amazing service. Thank you. Thank you for doing it. Now I feel like I should go and get a critique partner there. I’m kidding. I have lots of critiques.

I have one in mind. Susie? Yeah. Oh, is it somebody that, my name is Optim linked. Yeah, exactly. [00:40:00] Exactly. And you’d be one of the first people that I would go to for sure. Okay. So tell us a little bit about how you work with writers as a coach, and where can we find you? I’m pretty easy to find. I’m at Julie Arts basically everywhere, and my website is julie arts.com.

But I love working with people who are trying to subvert the status quo in their writing in some way, taking what’s been being done in publishing and turning it on their head just a little bit, whether that’s in middle grade YA or adult fiction, or also in memoir, especially in the social or environmental justice and women’s empowerment space.

So I really love helping writers take that last step where they’ve done almost everything they can on their own, but they can’t quite get an agent or can’t quite place with the publisher that they want, and they need that extra pro step. So I’ll work with you one-on-one or in, like I said, I have a group program called The Story Matters Mentorship.

That is a [00:41:00] combination of community live coaching calls and course materials that you can go through. I’ll work with you whether you’re writing your first book or your 50th. I’ll work with you, whether you’re revising or writing that first draft. I love doing pitch strategy. It’s one of my favorite pieces.

It’s a little bit of a numbers game, and I love to play it, and I will play it with you. So yeah, I love that. I love that. I love the stats in it too. Okay, this has been amazing. So listeners go check out in the show notes, watch for the next iteration of CP Mecu whenever you’re listening to this. Yeah, go and give it a try and let Julie know that your TE partnership, what, what happens with it.

’cause she loves hearing it. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. We’re gonna have you back, I have no doubt talk about all the millions of things that we could talk about, but this was a really fun conversation. It’s gotten my creative juices flowing and I thank you so much for being here.

Thanks so much for having me, Susie.[00:42:00]

Thanks for tuning in to show. No. Tell Writing With me, Susie Vidori, help me continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you’re writing or planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening. Also visit susie vidori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list where you’ll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community.

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