Emily: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast.
Rachel: That will help you write a book.
Emily: You'Re damn proud of.
Rachel: I'm Rachel.
Emily: And I'm Emily.
Rachel: And today we want to talk about what writing feedback should really be be like. So I brought this topic to us today because recently we have heard some really shitty stories about feedback, both from other writers, so writers giving other writers feedback, and from professionals, which surprised me a little bit. A professional giving a writer feedback. And I wanted to spend some time talking about it because feedback is very important to me. I think it's very important to any writer. I think we all need outside eyes on our work to tell the best stories and to tell the stories that we really envision in our head. We need the reader perspective. So we need feedback from other people to help us get to that. And when I hear these horror stories and when I hear these terrible experiences that people have had with feedback, it makes me really sad. It makes me really upset and.
Emily: Kind.
Rachel: Of breaks my heart a little bit because you'll hear these writers that leave a feedback conversation or leave this moment where they've received feedback and just feel so down on themselves and feel like.
Emily: It can be so harmful, right?
Rachel: Yeah.
Emily: I think writing is one of the most vulnerable things that we can do. Even when you're writing fiction. There's so much of us that we put into our characters. There's so much bravery, I think, that we show when we start a new craft, when we try something new, even if it's not new, even if it's just a new story. Like, we all have to go through iterations with our work and it gets better as we go. Which means, right, it's going to be rough and raw at the beginning, but we still need feedback to make sure that the vision that we see in our heads is coming out on the paper. That's the only way that we can improve is by getting other people's eyes on our work. But it's so vulnerable because we don't like to be told that we did something that didn't come out the way that we wanted it to. I think a lot of times we interpret that as we've done something wrong or we failed in some way when it's part of the process and bad feedback just compounds that.
Rachel: Yeah, it does. And you're so right that writing is very vulnerable. The act of writing itself, with myself in particular, so much of my characters and my stories come from within me. Like I'm putting pieces of myself on the page. And so that's very vulnerable. And then when you share that with someone else and ask them to comment on it, you're being vulnerable in that act and you're opening up your heart. And then when you get feedback that hurts, it can be extremely discouraging. So I wanted to share like, two examples of what I've heard recently, and then we can talk about it. And then I would love to break down why feedback shouldn't be this way and what feedback should be like. Instead, what the true version of feedback actually is like. Because I want our listeners to take away some really big hope that feedback is a good thing. And at first it can be really scary, but it doesn't have to leave you feeling like you're going to flip your computer over and walk away from your story. It should feel really good. So we're going to talk about that. But here are the two stories that have been on my mind. The first one is a story that I've heard about a writer asking for a professional level of feedback. They had asked for a line edit, and the editor actually gave them back a developmental edit, which is a first, like, really big red flag flag. Why that's an issue is because as a writer, you approach a professional, you approach anybody asking for something very specific. You have expectations of what that looks like, you know, in your head, this is what I'm getting. And then someone gives you back something that is completely not what you asked for. And I think all of us have experienced a situation where that does not satisfy you, that is not helpful because it's not what you asked for. So just flat out, that was very unhelpful for this writer who was telling me the story because she did not get what she asked for and she also then paid for it. So this editor gave her the wrong feedback, charged her for it, number one, red flag, number two.
Emily: And you do not just to be clear, you do not have to pay for something that you did not ask for. If you ask a professional for a line edit and they come back to you and say, I did this instead, pay me a different amount of money, you do not have to do that. And that's why we'll talk about this on a different episode. But it's really important to set those expectations up front, to have a contract, to have an understanding of what you're asking for, because that's just a gross abuse of power.
Rachel: It is. And that's why editing contracts are so important, because you have an agreement on what services you have agreed to, this professional has agreed to provide and what you've agreed to pay for. And if those don't line up, you have signed a contract. And so that contract, this editor would then be in breach of contract. They have not provided you the service that you agreed to pay for. So big red flag. If you're not signing an editor contract, when you go to work with a professional, that's a red flag. You would want to ask why that is and hopefully get something into place because it protects both of you like, we are professionals. It also protects us. It also protects us that we are giving the service that we provide and that we're going to get paid for that service. But it protects the writer where you're getting the service you've asked for. Number one, this writer got feedback that she didn't ask for. Number two, the feedback that she did receive was all over the place. As far as professional tone, it was not respectful. It was short, it was not specific. It was leaving her with things like, this doesn't work, but no reason why that specific passage didn't work. It was leaving her with all sorts of confusing suggestions that didn't really have anything to do with what was going on on the page. And then when this writer got to the end of the feedback, she shared with me that this professional editor had started to leave comments saying, like, oh, I must have missed something. I'm getting to the end here, and I must have missed something. But then this editor never went back to, like, see what it was she missed or where that was or if this was actually on the page. And it was on the page. So this editor had read over it, but then had left all this feedback that was criticizing it being missing.
Emily: Yeah.
Rachel: So the writer was just left completely downtrodden. She was completely discouraged. She was sharing with me how it literally made her hate her story and want to give up writing in general, because all of this feedback was critical for no reason, nitpicky with no suggestions, and it just left her feeling like she was a terrible person.
Emily: Well, it sounds like it left her with no way to move forward.
Rachel: Exactly. Like, nothing helpful, no actionable, next steps. She was just telling me it just felt like this person was angry and taking it out on her. Yeah. And from a professional level, I just have to express how wrong that is. This is someone who we hold professionals to a higher level of standard with providing feedback, because that is their job. If I ever made a writer feel like they were going to give up because of my feedback, like, if they felt personally devalued because of what I said to them, that is a failure on my part. So she shared the story with me and I was just left aghast. I was just like, I'm so sorry that that happened to you, because that's not what feedback should be and that's absolutely not what, like, a professional and writer relationship should be. Like. It set this writer, if I hadn't have talked to her, that obviously helped, but it, like, made her never want to work with a professional ever again. And that does no value or service to her story or to any story that she writes in the future. So we've heard that story and there's a lot of things wrong with it. There's a lot of red flags in there. Before we talk about that, I want to share the second story with you, which is a writer to writer story. So I heard this recently where a writer was involved in a writing group. This writing group had, what I would say, strict standards, but not in, like a helpful sense, in rules. Just to have rules exist for no reason since. So this writer was told that if she was going to be in this writing group, she needed to finish a draft in three months.
Emily: What?
Rachel: Yes. Three months, that was it. And that if she didn't finish in three months, she couldn't be part of the group. And she had barely started, so she felt very rushed throughout the drafting process. But she wanted to get the feedback. She wanted to be involved in the community. She wanted to be part of the group. So she did it. She finished the draft. She gave it to another member of the group. I'm pretty sure it was the head of this group. There should never be a head of a writer group. By the way, the person in charge of running this group read her story, said it was so terrible that she didn't deserve a spot in the writing group, and kicked her out of the writing group. So this writer was left. She was asked to write a draft in three months. She did it. And then she got feedback that her book was so terrible that she didn't belong in this group, and then she was kicked out of the group. And this is a real story. I'm not just making this up for the podcast. That is a real life story. And she was left. She was telling me how that has basically given her a trauma response when thinking about sharing her work because it was rejection. She felt like it was completely unfair because she had been asked to rush through this draft. None of this feedback was she barely even got feedback to improve her story because she was just kicked out of the group. So the feedback that she did receive was condescending. It spoke down to her. It didn't teach her anything about how to improve her skills. It made her just feel like a piece of shit. And then she was kicked out of the group and wondering, what am I doing with my life? Should I even love writing? Should I even want to do this? Because I'm just going to get rejected if I share anything.
Emily: Two of the things that are standing out to me from both of these stories are just the way that people in positions giving feedback is a kind of position of power. You're entering a relationship where.
Rachel: The writer.
Emily: Is asking somebody to give their opinion on something, to give them direction, to ideally support them. But I think that in a lot of the horror stories that we hear, it's somebody abusing that power either. Because a lot of times I think it's like that hurt people, hurt people kind of thing. Where it's like we've been stomped on and we've had our vulnerability and our creativity stomped on until you stomp on somebody else.
Rachel: Right.
Emily: But we hear a lot of these stories with teachers and mentors and coaches and childhood who have led us astray from something that we really wanted to do because they've told us in so many words that we don't deserve it, or we're not good at it, or it'll never amount to anything, or all the other versions of that story. And so I think that's why respect and trust and support in feedback relationships is so important because it is you're creating this mini power dynamic between you and the person you're asking for feedback for. And you have to be able to trust that they're not going to abuse that.
Rachel: Yeah, if you think about there are so many negative connotations around the feedback word, if you just would go up to a random stranger and say like, what's feedback mean to you? Like, they probably do not have a good experience with it. And I think you're absolutely right that it comes from this major power dynamic. And most people get their feedback at work and the feedback that they get is used to determine bonuses, pay raises, promotions worse. Worse. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm going for. It's 100% used as a way to externally validate or devalidate you, invalidate you. And it feeds those inner critic voices that are just so latched onto your own personal worth. So that's like people's baseline experience with feedback in most cases. And then you throw in writing, which is something that you love, that you do on the side. It's not just your job. For a lot of people, they're hoping it's the thing that they want to do. And then they get feedback that makes them feel less than, makes them feel devalued. And it makes them question everything about their writing, everything about themselves. And it's just so sad for me to feel like that. It's awful. If you're listening to this and you're like, that's my experience with feedback. I just want to give you a giant hug, like a cross podcast hug, and say, that's not how it's supposed to be. And it doesn't have to be like that. It's not like that in what we teach, in our facilitated writing groups, in our communities. It's not like that. It shouldn't ever be like that. Feedback should be uplifting, revitalizing. It should be encouraging. We still want you to be honest. We give feedback to help us improve. Like the definition, it's about growth. It's about growth.
Emily: It's about growth. And you can't grow without shedding light on the areas where you and your story. And when I say you, I don't mean you as a person, as like someone deserving of worth. I mean you as a writer and your skill sets, right? Because that's something that needs to grow. We want to grow it right. Wherever you are now, I doubt you're like, I want these same skill sets in my writing ten years from now. No, you want to grow. And in order to grow your writing skills and your story, because every story has to grow from a seed into its whole complex self, right? Like, it's going to go through iterations. It cannot be perfect from the first time you start to put words on the page. And so for both of those things to grow, we have to shed light on the areas where it needs growth. It's impossible.
Rachel: It's impossible to grow as a writer.
Emily: And to grow your story without feedback. It's so important.
Rachel: Yeah. But those areas of growth should never feel like failing.
Emily: No.
Rachel: And no one should ever make you feel devalued because they're pointing out an area where you could improve. And I think that's such a major piece of this is that feedback can be hard. Feedback can be difficult. It can be a tough conversation. I want to emphasize that I believe feedback should be conversational between two human beings. It should not be this imbalanced power dynamic where one person is telling another person, this is how much you suck, and this is why you should fix it. That's not the attitude that real feedback has. Real feedback says, hey, I really want to help you with this project. Number one, what do you need help on? And number two, how can I help? And three, here's my thoughts. And I'm putting my arm alongside you. Literally, we're standing side by side, and I'm saying, this is what I think I could help you with. What do you think? Does this ring true? Is what I'm saying? Clear? Can I add anything? Can you share with me what you were thinking in this moment? Because I might have missed something, but I want to make sure that what feedback I'm giving you is helping you get closer to the vision that you want.
Emily: That's it. That's the key.
Rachel: That's the conversation. The conversation is not, okay. I'm going to go through your manuscript with a red line and tell you this is why you suck. It is. I'm your friend. I care about you, and I want you to tell a better story or I want you to tell the story that you dream about. And so how can I help you do that?
Emily: I just want to highlight what you just said because I think it's so important a healthy feedback relationship is when the person giving feedback is asking you is engaging in conversation with you about what it is you're trying to achieve for the story. And that's where the professional in your first story went so wrong.
Rachel: Yes.
Emily: Is there was no conversation with that writer about what she was trying to do with her story. And if there had been, there wouldn't have been confusion about whatever the thing was that she missed in the middle of the story that made her feedback make no sense. It's about what is your vision? And then the person giving the feedback, explaining where that vision is not coming through and helping come to a conclusion about how to make that clearer. It's a back and forth relationship. Now that we're talking about this, I think that that's what helps make it not feel so much like that power dynamic of you have all the power because you're giving the feedback and I don't. It equalizes. It because the writer still has power over their vision for the story. And the person giving feedback has some power over helping see their side of it. But it's not one against the other. It's both.
Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. When you're working with another writer and like a CP relationship or in a writer group, that conversation can be easier to facilitate because you're going back and forth. Usually you're having maybe a meeting, a zoom call, whatever it is with a professional. Sometimes you give them the manuscript, they send you back the letter. That's it. They send you back, like, your manuscript with their comments. And then sometimes they're going to send you, like, a feedback letter that contains their thoughts, and then that's the end of the relationship. I think it's important that editors create the most comfort for their clients, the most safe space. And I'm not talking about comfort as in not challenging them. I'm talking about like, this is still a conversation. Even if it's an exchange of goods, you are exchanging a service. But that doesn't mean that when that feedback is delivered, you are wiping your hands. Hands off. Done. Good luck. I didn't enjoy your story. It should never be like that. The editor should still be like I like to think of it. There's a learning term called scaffolding where if you're learning a skill or a piece of information, it's literally like the scaffolding of a building. Like, you should be offering support to learn that thing. There should be scaffolding in order for you to understand and start implementing that thing. I think editors, it's their duty to help provide that scaffolding. I think that should be baked into their process and their prices. I think all of that is part of this whole relationship. It's not just, I'm going to send you back your manuscript. I'm done. It should be here's. All the ways that I can help you here are my specific, thoughtful, respectful, encouraging thoughts. Yeah, that's what feedback should look like. My point is, it should still very much be a conversation, even in that professional relationship where oftentimes it doesn't feel like that. It feels like you're just paying them to give you their comments and then that's it.
Emily: I think the most successful and I'm biased because this is how we used to do our developmental edits when we have that as a service. But I do think that if this is something that's resonating with you and, you know, a developmental editor or a full edit of some kind, where you're doing that one time exchange, if you're considering something like that, I would ask the editors that they provide before and after coaching calls before calls to figure out exactly what it is that you're looking for, exactly what your vision is for the story. And then an after call to answer your questions, to have a conversation about their feedback. I feel like, personally, I feel like at minimum, that should be provided.
Rachel: Yeah, I 100% agree. I think too, with so much of this exchange with writers to writers, and with professionals to writers, it's done. Over written communication. We all know how easy it is to misinterpret tone over written communication. I'm not talking about the little words that are being said, which in my horror story earlier, like the words that were being said were very unprofessional. But I'm also talking about the tone that's behind those words. And that's why another key piece of feedback is relationship. Because when you get to know someone, you get to know their tone, you get to know their mannerisms, you get to know how they speak to you. And it's much easier to filter out those. Usually they're inner narratives that we create of like, oh, this person hates me. I do that all the time. All the time, right. They were so mad at me because they used a period, not an exclamation point. That's why I have 1000 exclamation points in all my emails, because I want you to know I like you. I think once you get to know someone, once you start this relationship, you filter that out. You don't worry about tone because you know they're never going to speak to you like they hate you because you know them. That's why it's relational. It really helps, communication wise, to have that.
Emily: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel: Yeah. So let's talk for a second. We talked about what feedback should really feel like, but I want to give.
Emily: You what it should feel like.
Rachel: Yeah. What it shouldn't feel like. We've talked about that. I want feedback to feel like a positive experience. And again, let's put an asterisk there that sometimes feedback conversations are hard, but we want it to feel like a good thing. Feedback should be a good thing. So let's revisit our definition of feedback. I think I said it earlier, I can't remember, but I'm going to say it again. The definition of feedback is very neutral. It is literally just information on performance with the basis of improvement. That can be information about your strengths, that can be information about where you need to improve. But feedback as a baseline is neutral information. That's what it is. It's not harsh. It's not nowhere in there does it say, is calling out people's mistake. Nowhere in that definition is it trying to make you seem like it should make you feel less than. I want people, if they have all sorts of thoughts about feedback, to just sit with that definition for a second and say, like, okay, that's neutral. That is baseline. It's information. And what you can do with information is take it or leave it. You don't ever have to implement feedback that you are given because you are still in control of your story and you remain in power over it. Whoever is giving you feedback does not have power over your story. You do.
Emily: Yeah.
Rachel: So let's also make that clear.
Emily: All they're doing is showing you what they see, and you get to do what you want with that.
Rachel: So let's try to reframe that feedback word into something that is neutral and hopefully gets to that point of being positive.
Emily: Yeah.
Rachel: I love feedback. Sometimes it still is hard for me to get it because of all of the feelings and energetic voices that I have. But I love feedback. I call myself a feedback evangelist because it's so important and all it is is that information to help you get your book closer to the vision in your head.
Emily: Yeah. So we have two things we want to talk about, I think. Two takeaways, really, from both of those stories yes. That I think can help us really wrap our hands around what good feedback should look like. And if it's not these two things, honestly, don't listen to it.
Rachel: Yeah, leave it.
Emily: Don't.
Rachel: I thank you, but no thanks.
Emily: It's not useful if it's not these two things. So the first one is that good feedback should be given on what you ask for. It's like so important, whether it's from a professional that you're paying for their services or just another writer that you're asking for feedback on your work. We all know that our stories go through tons of iterations, right? We first start trying to put the building blocks together, and at that phase, we usually need brainstorming help. Then we have the building blocks together and we want feedback on those. Then we go to the more minutiae things like line edits and copy edits and things like that. But the last thing this happened to me once, literally, I asked somebody very specifically for feedback on a chapter to make sure that my character's goals and motivations were very clear. I had a very clear ask of this person. What I got back from them was a red lined chapter of all of my grammar mistakes and all of the adverbs I shouldn't have used and all of basically, like, the bad copy edit habits that I had. And I was like, I haven't even looked at this for copy edit stuff, what I asked for, so I just threw it out. I didn't even, like, that person broke their trust with me because they didn't give me what I asked for. And that's exactly what happened with the professional in the first story. It's like that writer wanted line edit. She didn't want a developmental edit. And the fact that she was given a developmental edit meant that that professional had breached that trust.
Rachel: Anyway, I can't.
Emily: So that's the first one. And that means that on your side, you have to be really specific about what it is that you want somebody to give you feedback on. Because if they don't know what you're asking for, you're going to get things that you don't want because they're going to just kind of be groping for something that will help you, but you want to ask for what's going to help you help you in the moment.
Rachel: Can I add one thing there before? Absolutely. So the more specific that you can get in your ask, the more effective feedback you will receive. So, like with your case, Emily, you wanted feedback about character stuff. Character stuff. And if you're thinking about, like, what telling someone, I want character things good, better than nothing. Next level is, does my character decisions make sense? Do you see the pattern of their growth? Do you see them struggling with this thing and that thing? Like you can get very specific with what you're asking for.
Emily: Yeah.
Rachel: That also means that you need to be very aware of what you want. But I promise you, the more specific questions that you ask, the more specific feedback that you ask for, the more effective feedback you're going to get that will help you revise, that will help you implement this feedback so much easier. Because if you ask the question, give me feedback on my character stuff, that could be a thousand different things, and it might not be very helpful to implement. But if you ask, are my characters goals clear in each scene? That's pretty easy to implement. If someone comes back to you and says, no, they were not clear in this scene, you're like, okay, I need to make my character goals more clear in that scene.
Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And that takes a certain level of self trust.
Rachel: Right?
Emily: Because you have to trust that you know what you need. And so we talk a lot about this in our feedback training, which we will tell you about in a second. But yeah, just recognize that that's a practice. Knowing what to ask for is a practice. But knowing that if you get feedback that doesn't resonate, look back at what you asked for, and it could be a miscommunication there on your part as to what it was that you were asking for. And sometimes when you get that feedback that doesn't resonate, it can shed light on what you actually need to ask.
Rachel: Exactly.
Emily: Which could be helpful. And it's a process of growth and communication.
Rachel: And again, why it should be a conversation, because then you can go back and be like, oh, man, thank you for saying. That what I really needed to know was this can we talk about this instead? And it's not like you're left being mad because you didn't get what you wanted and now you don't know what to do. It's the back and forth.
Emily: Absolutely. So first thing is get specific on what you ask for. And if somebody doesn't give you good feedback, or if someone doesn't give you feedback on what you ask for, you don't have to listen to it, period. And the second thing, we've already touched on it a little bit. Specificity is important. Yes, good feedback is specific. Good feedback says, this is what I'm seeing. This is why I'm seeing it. And here's what I would ask yourself or look at maybe. But it always needs to include why they see or feel or are identifying something for you.
Rachel: Right.
Emily: So, for instance, general vague feedback would be something like, I think you could improve this chapter as the writer. You can't do anything with that. And so therefore, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You don't have to do anything about it because you can't you don't know what it is that they're having an issue with versus specific feedback, which would be something like, I think you're missing agency in this scene. I'm not seeing your character make any choices or pursue a goal. Right. That's specific. You can say, oh, okay, well, what's my character's goal in this scene? And how can I give them more choices? That specificity allows it to be actionable. And so if someone is giving you feedback regularly that is not actionable and is not specific, then that is a feedback relationship that's not shedding light on ways you can grow.
Rachel: Yeah, it's not really serving you. The same thing is said about your strengths, where if someone says, oh, I really liked that chapter. Okay, why? Let's dive deeper into that. Because just as much as we need to know the areas where we want to improve and to change our story, we also need to know what our strengths are so we can keep doing them. Like what is working really well, what passages are making tons of sense and why? Because that helps you implement those skills again. So we have the constructive criticism, which is a feedback term that I don't love to use, but we're using it for this portion of the podcast. And then you have, like, praise. And you know what? I'm just going to like, let's level set on some of these terms because I don't love those two terms, and I'm going to tell you why. I think they also carry a lot of burden. But in your head right now, I want you to picture a vertical axis and a horizontal axis. Okay? So they're like a square. Like, you're going to have the vertical axis in the middle and the horizontal axis in the middle. And they meet and they continue to form like a cross. Does that make sense? Okay, so a cross would create four different quadrants for you. Okay? We have so many visual areas, but you're picturing like, two squares on top, two squares on bottom, divided by a horizontal line and a vertical line. Okay? The horizontal line, I want you to attach two words on each side. So there's one word on each side, positive and negative. And then the vertical axis, I want you to attach one word on each side, specific in general. So now you have four quadrants. You have positive, specific feedback, and you have negative specific feedback. Those are thumbs up. Those are good types of feedback. There's nothing wrong with, like, the word negative. In this case, we're just using it as like, okay, negative feedback would be constructive feedback. Those would be areas of improvement. Positive feedback would be your areas of strength. Let's hype those up. Now, we want positive specific, and we want negative specific feedback. Those are the check marks areas. Like the check mark, the thumbs up areas of this quadrant. The other side of the quadrant is general, where you have negative general feedback that's like, I didn't really like this. This didn't really resonate. And then you have positive general feedback, which is like, I really liked this. This worked really well. But remember, we want specific feedback. So we move it down into the specific portion of this quadrant. So those are our four types of feedback. We go into a lot of this, but I brought this up because I think I want you guys to take away that just because you're getting that instruction on how to improve. If it's specific, that's very, very good. If it's general, we want to avoid that. We want positive and we want negative specific feedback. We want to avoid positive and general or positive and negative general feedback.
Emily: And we go so deep into.
Rachel: Not.
Emily: Only how to get feedback like this, like how you can set your relationship up in your asks up for how to get specific feedback, but also how to give it if you're in a writing relationship. Because oftentimes in critique partnerships in small groups, you're also giving feedback. And so this is why. This whole podcast episode is why we have our feedback training, which is a training that we require folks in our tenacious writing program to go through in order to join our critique partnerships and small group programs. Because it's so important that everybody in our feedback relationships know how to do this and know what to look for and know how to be in respectful and supportive relationships. So if you've been dying for a community of people who think this way and have this value system and this outlook on giving feedback in fiction writing partnerships, check out tenacious writing because it's so good. We're all growing so fast.
Rachel: Yes, it is literally mind blowing when you have a group or when you have a feedback relationship. That feels good, that is helpful, it's effective, it's respectful.
Emily: It is so invigorating.
Rachel: Yes. Like, I have been with my writing group now for a year, and the feedback that I've gotten from them and also the relationships that I've created with these other people has been amazing. It's literally been game changing for my book.
Emily: I love it.
Rachel: At every point, we have been on the same page, we have the same expectations and understandings about how feedback works. And it's been a healthy relationship. So we invite you to come be part of our groups, take this training, because it really will change your perspective on the power of feedback. It is very powerful.
Emily: You can find that at Tenacious Writing.
Rachel: Or there's a link in our show notes.
Emily: Yeah.
Rachel: So either way. Okay, let's change gears for a second. So we're going to start wrapping up the podcast, but before we do, we have this amazing vision of having episodes where we answer listener questions. We do this a lot in our community and the tenacious writing community. They're called coaching calls. Coaching hours. The members of our community bring us questions and we provide coaching and advice on the spot on a live call. So we want to do a version of that in a podcast episode. And so we'd like to invite you to email us your question. It can be anything craft community mindset, just writing related. Email us your question at [email protected], put in the subject line Podcast Question, and we will collect them. And we will do an episode in the future with all of our questions and go through them and provide advice.
Emily: Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. So let us know what's on your mind. All right. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on.
Rachel: Our email email list. Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arts. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
Emily: Link is in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
