Recently, a couple of pros (waving at wenspencer and mabfan) have impressed upon me the importance of having a cheerleader for your writing. Both of them have someone who reads their work as they write it and tells them how great it is. And then once they're done with the story/chapter and are ready for actual critical feedback, they either give the piece to someone else, or they ask their cheerleader to go ahead and tell them what didn't work.

The idea of having someone to cheer me on sounds awfully nice. Is there anyone here who'd like to try? Yes, I know I've always maintained that I don't need anyone to blow smoke up my ass, but maybe I do in the rough draft phase. It sounds like a wonderful way to keep motivated. I'd send you god-awful raw text, and you'd tell me what you liked about it. And then once I was ready to sit down and try to revise it into good enough shape for my writing group, I'd ask you if you had any critical feedback.