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 When all you know is fight or flight, red flags and butterflies all feel the same. 
- Cindy Cherie
 
When you are in freeze mode, even the reddest flags and most beautiful butterflies seem unoriginal, trite, meh.
-Oona Cava
 

 
I hear writers complain all the time that they are bored by their own writing. Some version of, “I don’t think it’s worth revising,” or, “I feel like none of my ideas are going anywhere,” are the most common but there are many other ways to say that you find your own output boring.
 
On the spectrum of blocked creativity, this one is nowhere near as severe as not being able to write. We ARE writing, we aren’t taking much pleasure in it, or it seemed okay while we were doing it but reading it back, it feels ‘meh.’
 
Sometimes we turn to books on writing, hoping to find a new approach that will shake things up, get us past the boredom. Other times (maybe most of the time) we abandon the project and start something new. Hence the drawer full of half-written-in notebooks, or the unfinished stories filed away on our desktops, often tagged with something like, “Ideas,” “Someday/Maybe,” etc. So we tuck that draft away and start something that holds more promise, trying not to think about how many drafts started in the same promising way. This is the serial monogamy of writing.
 
What is happening here and how do we break out of the boring cycle? I have a theory. Humans have retained their ancient response to unknown threats, in spite of the lack of actual immediate danger in our modern world. We experience a stress response to things that are new, even when they are neutral or even good opportunities. If this sounds familiar, yes, I’m talking about the Fight/Flight/Freeze response. There is a great treatise/book/pamphlet thingy called The Flinch written by Julian Smith that links this response (which he calls the flinch) to anything that we find unique. Instead of approaching new things logically, our ancient response is to get stressed about them. Knowing this, you can develop a new approach to anything that makes you flinch, building resilience.
 
How does this relate to being bored by your writing? Well, I suspect that boredom is the creative equivalent to the Freeze component of Fight/Flight/Freeze. The Fight response might be getting incredibly defensive when receiving feedback; Flight would be the classic case of writer’s block, where all your ideas seem to vanish and there is nothing to write and Freeze would be the in-between: you aren’t running away and you aren’t attacking. Instead, you are just…meh.
 
Some examples of Freeze behaviors include feeling like you’re writing the same story over and over again, lacking fresh ideas, working your way veeeeerrrrrry slowly, stopping to research everything, re-outlining, spending more time on your spreadsheets than you do on drafting, justifying not going back to your work in progress because life is busy, or hard, or your head is not in it now, but you are sure it soon will be…and wow, a whole summer has gone by but when NaNoWriMo rolls around it will be the perfect time to restart….
 
Now for the good news: if you have experienced any of these, welcome to the club! I’m a world-class Freeze writer myself. It’s my go-to stress response. If you are too, here is what to do:
 
1.Recognize that you are in Freeze-Factor mode.

2.Commit (or re-commit) to your quantifiable goal. You will write through the boredom until you hit your word count, your page count, or until that timer goes off. You are not committing to quality here, not to amazing feats of storytelling. You are committing to finishing what you’ve started, no ifs, ands, or buts.

3.Turn to your . Put at least one item from your personal Id List into every writing session, even if it doesn’t make perfect sense while you are doing it. Now is not the time for making sense. Now is the time to escape the Freeze. There is plenty of time to fix things later when you edit.

4.If this is a project that will take multiple writing sessions to complete, borrow from Hemingway and always leave off for the day knowing how you will start the next session. Stop mid-sentence. Leave yourself a list of three next things you will write. Make these small, clear, easy & above all, not too general or ambitious. For example, don’t leave yourself a note saying, Tomorrow: write a scene that shows how amazing Liza is, do world-building for the planet, and build suspense about the murder. These are projects, not tasks, to borrow from David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Instead, do this: Write scene where Liza shares her oxygen supply with Patrick, even though he broke her heart; name the planet where they will land (something evoking water – look up Latin names of marine life in Southeast Asia for ideas), and have Patrick discover an empty oxygen tank stowed in the ship’s recycler unit.

5.To borrow from Tim Gunn of Project Runway fame, Make It Work! I read Gunn’s story about the genesis of his catch-phrase whenever I am tempted to discard unfinished projects:

     “I found quickly that there is an inclination to abandon a project that's not going well," he explained to The Commonwealth Club of California. Gunn would encourage students to start over ... until he came to a realization. "I then thought I'm doing my students a disservice," he said. "This 'abandoning of a problem at hand' is not good for them. If they sit with it, offer up a diagnosis of what's going wrong, and then figure out a prescription for how to make it work, they have a whole new set of resources to go into their problem-solving arsenal. (From https://www.thelist.com/203955/the-untold-truth-of-tim-gunn/)

6. Do not edit or re-read your work until you have finished the project. Even if this means there will be holes, promise yourself that you will find and fix them later. There will always be holes. That is what editing is for.
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7. Give yourself full credit for completing your commitment rather than the quality of the results. Over time, you will use compartmentalizing to your advantage. To put it another way, you are never going to silence your Monkey Mind, but you can get really good at putting it in time-out while you get on with your work.
 
I can’t promise you that this process will make you feel any better about your writing. I won’t promise that following my advice will make the process feel more magical, or even more enjoyable. The thing is, if you are writing for the hit, start something new every day, don’t worry about finishing, don’t worry about anything. Just chase the hit. But if you are writing to create a body of work, to get raw content down so that you can shape it into something wonderful, you will need to find a way to deal with your Freeze response.
 
And one last thing--and this one might be a pretty big letdown: You can’t get rid of your F-Factors. They are physiologic responses to what you perceive as unknown. You can’t change this any more than you can make exercise not hurt. But you CAN build up your tolerance, change the volume of that voice urging you to walk away, to pick up a shiny new penny. The more you ignore the voice instead of silencing it, the easier it is to get your work done. The Freeze Factor will try and trick you with new excuses that seem perfectly reasonable, but with every project you finish, you get better at recognizing it in all of its disguises, and, well, making it work.

Id Lists & Pillow Books: How To Crank Up All The Feels In Your WIP
 
I was recently introduced (thanks to the brilliant Anne Hawley) to the fabulous concept of an “Id List.” According to Jennifer Lynn Barnes, the concept’s creator, you should keep an ongoing list of all the things that you absolutely love, things that if you happened upon a movie featuring these elements, you would watch it no matter how bad it was. There are personal id lists and there are also categories that, according to Barnes, are universal to Western culture. Some of my Id List items include teams working together (à la Ocean’s Eleven), descriptions of overgrown gardens (like the one in the Italian villa in The English Patient), and sexy priests (obviously I’m talking about the sexy priest in Fleabag). Some of the universal categories include wealth, games, and beauty. Barnes has an excellent video lecture that will give you all you need to make your own lists.
 
It can feel vulnerable to create, let alone share your list, but I promise that it will reconnect you with the joy you felt when you first started writing, before you started guarding yourself from feedback, criticism, and self-doubt. So what would you put on your Id List? An enemies-to-lovers trope? A creepy old mansion? Descriptions of gemstones? Kick-ass women in the Wild West? Whatever floats your boat, no matter how specific or seemingly random, there are plenty of people out there who are drawn to same things as you.
 
 
If you are still doubting the power of an Id List, let me tell you a quick story. A few weeks before I learned about it, I read a YA book that I didn’t exactly love, but couldn’t put down. It was full of elements that were pretty engrossing: makeovers, mansions with secret passageways, a scavenger hunt with real-life consequences, and a love triangle. After listening to the Id List lecture, I googled Barnes to see her book list and…I’m sure you see where this is going. Barnes was the author of the compelling YA book. I was already planning to make my own Id List but after this I sat right down and started compiling. A few months later, my Id List had grown to many pages and I had inserted a number of items from it into my WIP. Then, I got a little stuck.
 
I realized my story needed something else, something on the flip-side of Id Lists. I needed to amp up the problems, the discomfort, the crappy situations for my main character, and I wanted readers to experience all of these emotions along with her. I went back to my scene outlines (yes, I’m a plotter) to think about where and how to inject more, well, bad feelings. I wished I had something like an anti-Id List to pull from. And then I remembered an odd little book that I’d read years ago: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon.
 
This is an actual diary written by a courtesan in tenth-century Japan. In addition to Shōnagon’s account of her life at court, it also includes very specific lists, many of them definitely anti-id, things like: Annoying Things, Very Tiresome Things, Things That Certainly Won’t Come True, Things That Make A Bad Impression, Inappropriate Things. (She does include lists of nice things too but I’m more struck by the specificity of the less pleasant ones.) So, I made a list of her anti-Id List categories and got to work. Here is a sampling of what I came up with:
 
Things that give an unclean feeling
-Stepping stocking-footed into spilled water
-Greasy hair
-White cuffs that are grubby
-A smear of burnt candle wick on one’s fingers
-Hairs and dust at the base of a toilet
-Grit, dirt, or pine needles inside your tent
 
Situations that you have a feeling will turn out badly
-Carrying something large stacked on top of something much smaller
-A small child near a cat or skittish dog
-Any sentence that starts out with “No offense, but…”
 
Things that make the heart lurch with anxiety
-Not finding your dog after noticing that your front door is open
-Driving to meet someone you know is about to break up with you
-Smelling something burning and only then remembering you have food on the stove
 
Surprising And Depressing Things
-Finding holes that can’t be repaired in one’s favorite clothing
-Noticing that your pet’s fur has gone grey
 
Occasions when the time drags
-Watching someone read your work
-Waiting for a sauce to thicken while you stir it
 
I’ve got a much longer list than what I’ve shared with you here and I’m still adding to it. I’ve started imbedding some of these into my WIP and I’m very happy with how much more uncomfortable I’ve made my main character. Hopefully my readers will feel bad too, at least until they encounter the next Id-List item I’ve left for them.
 
You can brainstorm items for your Id and anti Id-Lists as a writing warm-up. If you are going for a certain feeling in the scene, start with ten minutes of listing everything that you can think of that would trigger that feeling. It doesn’t have to fit in with the genre or world of your story. You can figure out how to do that later. For now, just jot things down as fast as you can.
 
Here is a longer list of Shōnagon’s categories, so that you can give it a try:

• Hateful Things
• Depressing Things
• Awkward Things
• Things that give an unclean feeling
• Boring Things
• Things people despise
• Infuriating Things
• Situations that you have a feeling will turn out badly
• Occasions when the time drags
• Things that make the heart lurch with anxiety
• Things that just keep passing by
• Things that no one notices
• Embarrassing Things
• Surprising And Depressing Things

 
I hope you come up with your own categories. If you do, I would love to see them, along with your list items. I would also love to know how you use these lists in ways I haven’t thought of. Drop a comment below and here’s to making our characters (and our readers) feel ALL the feels.
 
https://goteenwriters.com/2022/02/09/in-defense-of-the-chosen-one/

How Not to be a Bad Art Friend—A Guide for Setting Up a Non-toxic Writing Group
 
Have you read the recent New York Times article, “Who is the Bad Art Friend”? If you have, you are aware of the feelings it has stirred up in the writing Twittersphere and beyond. If you haven’t, well, I don’t know if I should recommend it to you or not. It’s kind of like shoving a carton of milk under your nose and telling you, “It’s gone bad. Smell it!” In either case, it follows two writers and one writing group and how the Facebook exchanges by one writer inspired the other writer to co-opt and in some sections of the story, downright copy a real life event, including actual letters and Facebook  posts, all in order to craft a story that is unfavorable to the first writer.
 
 It is a story examining many things, but what especially resonated for me was the frustration of being in a writing group where the goal is to support one another but where personalities and ambitions create temptations—to grit your teeth when a member is chronically needy, to swallow your jealousy when a member is more successful than you, to have to decide how honest to be with someone that you have grown to care about within the limited circle of your group but wouldn’t consider a friend outside of it. It also made me think about the slippery slope between venting and talking behind someone’s back. A writer friend of mine was horrified by the ‘mean girls’ element of the group’s members and I have to say that this part felt very familiar and authentic to me from some my own writing group experiences over the years.
 
I have been in writing groups since I was a teenager but it wasn’t until I was in my forties that I found myself in a group experiencing a ‘mean girls’ situation. Any group has occasional hiccups due to the natural group dynamics—egos trod upon, people submitting pieces much longer than the agreed-to max, busy times when some members flaked out for a period of time, but over the course of many years our group was solid, compassionate, supportive. I decided to leave the group when, after inviting in some new members, the emphasis evolved to be more about support and accountability and less about critique. On top of that, several of the new members brought with them some bad habits—talking about people behind their backs, alluding to events that only some of the group members were invited to, things that felt to me like ‘mean girl,’ junior high-type behavior. I still keep in touch with several members of the group who I consider beloved writing friends, but leaving the group gave me a chance to start fresh, with clarity about what I need for myself in a writing group. After reading the NYTs article, I thought it might be a good time to share what I came up with.
 
1. First, you must know what you need and want from your group and make sure that all your members share your goals and values. As I mentioned above, my old group changed when the newer members joined—they were mostly there to cheer each other on rather than to offer in-depth feedback. This left half the group feeling frustrated at the lack of critical depth and the other half feeling a bit wounded by intense comments that they didn't really want. To avoid this and to get what you need, ask yourself if you are a critique group or a support/accountability group. Or maybe you want both. Just be sure that potential members are totally on the same page and get very clear on what constitutes critique, support, and accountability.

2. If you desire critique, decide if you are after structural critiques or line edits. Again, you can have both but I’ve seen so much time wasted and frustration caused by focusing on the wrong thing. To me, there is little point to editing a piece line by line if the large structural pieces aren’t in place. I’ve seen fellow writers toil over the smallest details while shrugging off the lack of coherent plot structure. That being said, some people, especially those not looking to get their work sold and published, just want to write what they want to write, and while they don’t care about a tight plot, consistent characters, etc. they do care quite a lot about grammar, punctuation, and usage. So get clear on this in the group and again, make sure that these terms mean the same thing to each member.

3. If you want to include structural critiques, decide as a group which structural theories you will use as your guides. Are you a Save The Cat! group? Do you follow the system set out by John Truby? Or are you an adherent of Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid, or the related and equally excellent Story Path? If you are all about the hero’s journey, are you aware that there is also great work on the heroine’s journey? Maybe you love Larry Brooks, or the Snowflake Method, or Syd Fields, or K.M. Weiland. Obviously, you don’t have to pick just one and many of them complement each other but get clear on the basics of whatever your group wants to use so that you have a common structure and language. Something that my current group does is to occasionally dedicate a portion of a meeting to going over theories that our members are excited about. We are nerdy about theory, so this works for us.

4. Set out agreed-upon rules for how to conduct yourselves. This sounds really bossy and logistical but it is at least as important as any other part of setting up your group. This is the area where I see the most damage done by well-meaning people. I am going to share my specific rules with an explanation of why each is important.

Rule 1. With each submission, include specifics on what you want to be addressed. Members should stay within the parameters each writer sets. If they just want to know if the general vibe is working, do not drill down into the components. If they just want you to proofread something before they submit it to a contest, this is not the time to tell them you think the arc isn’t working.

Rule 2. When you go over each person’s submission, adhere to a time limit. This one is pretty self-explanatory.

Rule 3. Decide as a group whether the discussions will happen popcorn-style or if each member will have separate time to offer feedback. Also, decide whether the writer can jump in or should sit back silently until it is their turn. Does it sound like I’m treating you like preschoolers here? Sorry. This rule might be necessary if you have members who tend to interrupt, railroad, or lose track of whether or not they’ve already made their point. Related to this would be defensive writers who get so uncomfortable hearing their work critiqued that they jump in to respond to every little thing. You can always start more relaxed and revisit this one if you feel like the group dynamic needs a little more structure to keep it flowing fairly. Not to brag about my own group again (but I love us so I’m going to) but we took time recently to talk about each of our ‘receiving feedback styles,’ so we could better understand how each member might look (smiling politely) versus how they actually feel ('I'm a horrible writer and I will never write again!') about the feedback. Some of us get a little flushed, or struggle not to defend our choices, others only want feedback in a few areas that they have specifically laid out, while still others are delighted to receive as much feedback as group members have time for and in as many areas as possible. Knowing this has helped us be more supportive, but this level of sharing might feel way too much for some people. Again, just be clear on what works for you and your group.

Rule 4. (Part 1) If you have an issue with a group member, be honest, even if it feels shitty to speak up. We could call this one “The Who Is The Bad Art Friend” rule, in honor of the aforementioned NYT article. I think it boils down to this: Put on your Big Person pants and speak directly to the person you are having issues with. If you aren’t sure how to do this without hurting them or losing your temper, read up on nonviolent communication and put it into practice. I truly think we adults end up hurting each other more by trying to be nice than we do when we speak truth with compassion.

Rule 4. (Part 2) Make an agreement ahead of time with the members of the group about how much that is shared in the group (submissions but also emails, posts on a group page, etc.) can be shared with people outside of it.  Did something a member said or wrote inspire you? Check in with them to ask if you can use it. Share how you might use it. Respect them if they ask you not to. If you wonder about the significance of this rule, definitely read the NYT ‘Bad Art Friend’ article. It will cure you of shrugging this one off.
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Rule 5. Last but most importantly, if the group is simply not working for you, LEAVE. I’ve overstayed in relationships, groups, even in exercise classes that weren’t feeling like a good fit, just because I doubted my instincts or had a bit of FOMO. Maybe you have done this too. I hereby challenge both of us to listen to that inner voice and say our goodbyes when we know it's time to go. Again, be honest and speak from your heart. There are so many writers out there looking for groups, especially now that we have all adapted to this remote/video way of connecting with others. If you are looking for a new group, start one, laying out the particulars that resonated with you in this article. Use hashtags, Facebook, NaNoWriMo boards, Meetup, contact local bookstores to let them know you are forming a group.
 
Writing groups are such a wonderful way to be accountable, to connect, to celebrate your fascination with and passion for writing. Writing is such an isolated practice that coming together with others can supply that missing piece, and even for introverts, getting an outside perspective on your inner process is key. Once you have this support and connection the last thing you want is to worry that a member of the group has written a story about how you donated a k--, oh, wait. I shouldn’t spoil that NYT article. Anyway, let me know if you are in a group, if you’ve experienced any of the issues that these ground rules are there to prevent, or if you have any questions I can answer.
 
Let me leave you with a few  links that are helpful for starting or finding a writing group:

How to find a group:
https://www.writeordietribe.com/writers-craft/how-to-find-a-writing-group-thats-right-for-you
How to start a group:
https://goinswriter.com/writers-group/
If you want to start a group like mine:
https://storygrid.com/writing-groups/
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If you are interested in Oona Cava’s editing or writing coach services, or in bringing her in to coach your writing group, you can learn more at https://oonacava.com/index.html
 
 

“I’m about to kill him. I do not find him remotely sexy right now and I can’t believe I’m going to have to ask him again…”
     My friend’s voice trails off, full of hurt and anger. I’m standing in my kitchen, talking on the phone with her while I make dinner and she’s telling me that her husband keeps stalling and finding excuses for not reading the novel she finished for NaNoWriMo.
     As I blink my eyes over the onion I’m chopping, I remember when I went through this with an ex. Same thing: I’d finished my first NaNoWriMo novel and my ex asked to read it but weeks went by, then months while the crisp stack of printed pages sat on his desk, gathering dust. Like my friend, I eventually asked him about it and like my friend’s husband, he put me off, shamefaced. My ex asked me to read his work all the time, so when he wouldn’t read mine, and then the months stretched on, I got so frustrated, then angry, then sad that I decided that if he hadn’t started reading it by the end of that week, I would break things off with him. It might sound harsh but at the time, it was the last straw. As it turned out, he surprised me the very day I made that decision by telling me he had finished the manuscript and had taken the time to give me written comments. We went out to breakfast that weekend and he gave me very thoughtful notes, which I applied to my next draft. For me though, it changed something. I had given him feedback on his work for years and the way it had been so hard for him to return the favor left me shaken.
     Which is why, a decade later, now happily married to a man who eagerly reads my work, I’m surprised to hear my next words to my friend. “I think he’s just scared he’s going to let you down.”
     “Scared? Please,” my friend snorts. “It’s disrespectful.”
     “It feels like that,” I agree. “But I don’t think that’s where he’s coming from.”
     And I didn’t. When you really adore someone, the way I know my friend’s husband adores her, the stakes feel incredibly high. “What if he reads it and he can’t tell you it’s the best thing ever? What if he’s scared that he will learn that the one thing you care the most about, besides him, you aren’t great at?”
     My friend is a great writer and there’s no way that would actually happen, but fear, we all know, isn’t logical. Sometimes it’s easier to stall, to hem and haw, than to face that fear of letting someone down, their writerly face beaming in expectation. Sometimes, reading your partner’s novel is waaaay more than just reading your partner’s novel.
     Another big fear for a significant other poised to read their writer’s work is that they will look stupid in their partner’s eyes. Maybe they don’t know how to express their feedback, to find the right words to explain what works and what doesn’t; or they fear the novel will go right over their heads and they will be exposed as shallow or not up to their partner’s literary level. The point is, there are lots of reasons your partner might be avoiding reading your work, and almost all of them have nothing to do with disrespect or a lack of caring. Which is what I told my friend.
     “Huh. That makes sense, actually,” she said slowly. “Yeah.” Her voice softened. “I’m going to tell him if he reads it, he doesn’t have to say anything. I just want him to know me through my writing.”
     My friend’s husband was a bookworm but he wasn’t schooled in how to give helpful literary feedback. When he was given the option just to read her work, without needing to say anything, he quickly read the novel. He has also since proved very helpful when it comes to trouble-shooting plot hiccups, something he couldn’t do before actually reading the story.
     So, for all of you who would like to have a loved one read your work, but would prefer to skip the step where you lose all respect for them while they stall, procrastinate, and try to avoid all references to writing, books, and reading, I’ve put together some tips. These tips aren’t for you. They are for you to pass on to your loved one, to help them in the emotionally-fraught task of reading your work:
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Hi! So you are going to read your loved one’s writing? Take a nice, deep breath, relax your shoulders. It doesn’t have to be a horrible experience. Follow these steps and be prepared to dazzle your writer with your thoughtful, engaged feedback.

          1. Before you do ANY reading or writing, ask your writer, ‘What sort of response or feedback are you looking for?’ Sometimes, the first mistake we make is failing to ascertain that in reality, all that is wanted is a cheerleader who knows the basic outline of the writer’s work. On the other end of the spectrum, your writer might be looking for a line-edit of their work, going over every sentence as if preparing the manuscript for publication. You can’t give someone what they want if you don’t know what that is. And if you don’t feel comfortable digging into the depths of editing, make sure your writer accepts that this is beyond your comfort level. If this is something you can and want to do, excellent! This post is probably not written for you but please feel free to share it around with others who could use it. 

          2. If your writer just wants some support and cheerleading, read through their work, making notes or highlighting any turns of phrase, ideas, images—anything that strikes you as especially cool.  Once you’ve read through the entire piece like this, make a list of the things you’ve highlighted.  Bonus if you can say something about why you liked each thing. Example: “You really captured the way teenagers skulk around,” or, “I loved the way you kept going back to the image of the setting sun, because in a piece about growing old, that was a good metaphor.” 
     When you share your feedback with your writer, mentioning specific details that stood out to you as good will let them know that you took the time to think about their writing.

          3. If your writer wants a more ‘constructive criticism’ level of feedback, plan to go through the piece twice. The first time, you will do the same as in the above example, but also noting things that: a. confused you and b.caused you to lose interest or get distracted. Be a little bit careful not to criticize artistic choices (choices that you might not agree with because they aren’t to your taste but other than that, there isn’t anything wrong with them), as in, “I thought the story would be cooler if the villain had a gun instead of a whip,” but offer ways to strengthen the story: “Since the story is a classic detective noir, every time the villain pulled out their whip, I was distracted, wondering why they wouldn’t just use a gun.” The first example just swaps your aesthetic preference for theirs, while the second example isn’t aesthetic; it explains that the whip distracted you from staying grounded in the story. It allows the writer to weigh their artistic choice themself, deciding whether including the whip is worth the risk of distracting their readers.
     Once you’ve gone through the piece once, read it again, seeing if anything that confused or bugged you the first time makes more sense upon closer reading. Make any adjustments to your notes. 
​     Finally, make a list or write a brief letter, starting with the things you liked the most, putting the more critical comments in the middle, and finishing with a positive thought (the good old shit sandwich). If the positive thought feels tricky or cheesy, write something like, “Your approach to the noir detective novel is unique, and I’m looking forward to seeing where you take it,” or, “Writing about growing old is something that not everyone can do. Thank you for going to places that made me think.” Just put yourself in their shoes and end with praise and recognition for their hard work and for being brave enough to be vulnerable.
 
     And that’s it. That’s really all there is to it. I know that for both the writer and the writer’s loved one, this can be a vulnerable process, so here are a couple final thoughts:
 
     For the Writer: If you give someone your writing, also give them ample time to read it and to think about what they’d like to say about it. Don’t disrespect your own writing effort or your loved one’s time by shoving your writing at them expecting a fast turnaround.
 
     For the Loved One: If you’ve been given something to read, set yourself a deadline and tell your writer when you will have it back to them. Be realistic. Trying to be nice but then putting someone off only causes problems (See the first paragraph of this post). And be honest. If you truly don’t think you can give your writer feedback, tell them why. “I’m not comfortable being a critic. I’d rather be your cheerleader. Come to me whenever you feel like you need a reminder that you’re awesome,” is something that works, as long as you aren’t actually critiquing other writers. In that case, there is a different discussion to be had. Don’t like your writer’s work? What don’t you like about it? Not your genre? Do you cringe when you read all the grammatical mistakes? Do you just zone out because you hate homework and this feels like homework? Try to get past these things if you can, but if you can’t be honest.
 
     For Both of You: It takes guts to share your writing and it takes guts to critique someone’s writing. Neither should be taken for granted. It is said that by sharing adventurous experiences, dopamine is released in the brain, increasing feelings of happiness and love. By following these tips, you can improve your relationship—all without jumping out of a plane, shooting down rapids, or hiking up a steep mountain, although I would suggest springing for a good breakfast at your favorite place. And just think, the other patrons will see you, heads together over a manuscript, notes in hand and think you guys are the luckiest couple in the world.