A Great Crit Partner Will (Crit Diaries)

A great crit partner is the cross between your best friend, a perfect grammarian, someone you've never met, a wonderful writer, and your biggest fan.

Assuming she is the perfect balance of all these things, she will:

• Tell you when your main character is being dense.
• Tell you when your romantic hero is acting like a douchebag.
• Remind you that, though the action you've written seems like fun, it is only possible in Mary Poppins. Or the Matrix.
• Tell you when your romantic hero is acting like an old man.
• Correct your dialogue tag punctuation. Again. And again and again and again. And...oh! One more time.
• Scold you when your main character is being denser.
• Tell you when your romantic hero is creepy, creepy, EW, CREEPY, Leigh Ann!
• Scream at you when your main character is THE DENSEST GIRL THAT EVER LIVED.
• Fire up the cheese-o-meter and tell you when no couple, no matter how much in love they are, would ever say that to each other.
• Remind you about birth control. Not yours, your character's. (Or maybe yours too.)
• Tell you that if your characters are going to talk that way and/or use that language, you might as well be writing GA (geriatric adult) fiction.
• Endure (and sweetly respond to) dozens of insipid emails from you with titles like, "Let's talk about kissing"
• Give you permission, and even encouragement, to write more kissing scenes.
• Add up the number of days that have passed in your story.  Remind you that 10 days does not equal 1 week.
• Read a scene a second time. Tell you that's still not good enough. She knows you can do better.
• Give you query fever.
• Read the scene a third time. Tell you to do the happy dance, because now you've got it. And she knew you would.
• Talk you down from query fever.
• Knock you over the head with stories of her form rejections to save your mortal soul from query fever.
• Break your heart.
• Cheer you on.
• Make everything about your story SO. MUCH. BETTER.

Thanks, Gina.
Can't wait to see your gorgeous book in print. It is a pleasure to read and a privilege to give feedback, and even more of a privilege to get feedback from you.

PSA: I seriously THANK GOD for the day that Gina agreed to read my atrocious first draft. She has been my biggest cheerleader on this project, and if I ever make it to publication some day, she'll be a huge part of the reason. She's not mean, beastly or monstrous - she gave me just the critique I needed. And she rules. Okay, on with the show.