Circle of Reviews - Getting Feedback for Your Work

[00:00 - 00:15] Okay friends, I want to talk to you about the new line feedback review circles. So over the next 5 to 10 minutes, I'm just going to talk through how you get feedback for your work and like what the process looks like and how to think about it.

[00:16 - 00:25] I mean, for the context basically, it's just super depressing to just write to yourself and to write into your room. I feel like it's really hard to do.

[00:26 - 00:33] It's really difficult when you are just writing, writing for weeks and nobody's looking at it. It feels like nobody cares.

[00:34 - 00:43] You can get to kind of feel a little desperate. And so I just want to show you, like we've set up a process for how you can get feedback for your work and I want to talk you through that a little bit.

[00:44 - 00:53] And so they're basically just these different circles of people. And I'm going to talk through each one a little bit and like when to know to skip to the next one and what your checklist is for each one.

[00:54 - 01:02] But at a high level basically, right, so you're writing something and then you should first share it with a mentee. You should have a mentee and you should share it with them.

[01:03 - 01:08] And then you will share it with our editors. Then you should share it with other authors.

[01:09 - 01:15] Then we have beta readers a lot of the time. And then we'll have early access readers and then we have students.

[01:16 - 01:26] So let me talk through each of these and there's a Notion doc. If you're the Notion doc reading type and you'd rather read instead of listen to me talk, you can look at this doc as well.

[01:27 - 01:42] So I think that one of the biggest things that I find when I'm doing this is that just like writing to just right into the wall is hard. But when you're writing to someone who like really needs what you're writing about, it becomes super fun.

[01:43 - 01:48] You feel like you can't type fast enough. You feel like you have a mission and you are really excited to share it.

[01:49 - 01:54] So I think it's really important to get your work in front of other people. And so we'll help you do that.

[01:55 - 02:09] I think the first thing is like ultimately it's your responsibility to make sure that your work is like in front of other people. I think actually part of this process is making sure that other people care about what you're writing.

[02:10 - 02:13] You and I met together I'm sure. And we thought it was a good idea.

[02:14 - 02:26] And really even having people read it at all is actually a signal of like how interesting is what you're writing about. And so you want to be able to find people like hopefully those people are within the new line community.

[02:27 - 02:29] Hopefully those are other authors. Hopefully those are people in our Discord channel.

[02:30 - 02:35] But you know if you have to search outside we don't have everyone. There's only a few thousand people in our Discord.

[02:36 - 02:48] So like there are other people outside of our Discord channel who maybe are interested and we want to kind of like pull them in. So two other disclaimers kind of with this process is like these circles are generally applied from the inside out.

[02:49 - 02:58] But not always like some can happen in parallel and like don't be hung up too much on that process being serial. Some can happen in parallel.

[02:59 - 03:03] And the other part is like this is a tool. Each step of these is actually a tool and not a requirement.

[03:04 - 03:19] So the goal is to like be encouraging and to give you feedback and to create like a really solid final product. And not for you to have a lot of like roadblocks.

[03:20 - 03:29] So okay so let's go through each one of these in turn. And again if you would rather read you can of course just read this document.

[03:30 - 03:39] So the first one is just yourself. So make writing easier on yourself by planning ahead of time.

[03:40 - 03:43] So you and I've already discussed the ideas. You've discussed you define your outline.

[03:44 - 03:49] You've written the code and taken notes. You've already stubbed out your markdown files and you've written a first draft of your lessons.

[03:50 - 03:59] And so really before you kind of like share it outside you should have a first draft which is like basically readable. And just really add a basic consideration of the people who come after you.

[04:00 - 04:07] You should run it through a basic spell checker and you should run it through Grammarly. And really just reread it one time like actively with your editor open.

[04:08 - 04:13] Reread it one time and edit it. Don't like send it to someone else before you've at least looked at it once.

[04:14 - 04:22] So you know Eevee White says the best writing is rewriting. So at least just do a pass on these like basic consideration things before you send to someone else.

[04:23 - 04:28] Also we should have it up on newline.co for you. If we don't just reach out we'll get it set up.

[04:29 - 04:35] And the idea is that once it's up you can click through and make sure that it just looks like what you would expect. There's no missing images.

[04:36 - 04:38] There's no missing code examples. The formatting looks good.

[04:39 - 04:45] I guarantee like once you see it on the site it's like really exciting and you 'll maybe you'll find some things that you want to change. So here's your checklist for that.

[04:46 - 04:53] And really the level of quality here is that you have maybe a few to-dos left. Maybe some typos but it's basically like a good draft that someone can read.

[04:54 - 04:59] Okay step two your mentee. So now we're at like this the first ring outside.

[05:00 - 05:04] Your mentee so I think of this as like find your Sophia. What do I mean with that?

[05:05 - 05:12] Okay I think that it's really difficult to write to like students in general or like other programmers in general. But it's very easy to write to a specific person.

[05:13 - 05:23] So for me like I might imagine Sophia who I used to work with and I like can imagine what she knows and what she doesn't. You know when you're writing to a crowd or just like other programmers you're like "Ah did they already know this?

[05:24 - 05:25] Do they already know this? Do they already know this?

[05:26 - 05:28] Like I don't know. Like are they gonna argue with me about this?

[05:29 - 05:33] I don't know what they know. But if you imagine or actually really if you have a specific person.

[05:34 - 05:47] If you have like a Sophia in your life who you're writing to exactly your writing becomes a lot easier. Because I've talked about this in other videos before right we get in our head about like oh someone's gonna argue with me about the technicalities.

[05:48 - 05:55] And someone who would argue with you isn't actually your audience. Someone who's arguing is someone who like already knows.

[05:56 - 06:08] Who you're writing to is somebody who like really wants to learn. And so on top of that you also just want to find one other person in your life who's like a specific person who wants to learn this material.

[06:09 - 06:20] So like if you know oh I'm ready to Sophia like does she know about like the use effect? Like you could like you know that specifically you'll know it should be tripped up on and you know how to how like help her get from like point A to point B and the ideas.

[06:21 - 06:29] So it's very easy to write to one specific person. So what I'm suggesting is you literally find that actual person someone who you worked with before somebody who's a junior engineer where you work.

[06:30 - 06:45] Find your Sophia who's like a real life mentee who wants to learn what you're writing about and is you're gonna get like basically personal tutoring from you . And ask them to read your first draft and then just go or just get up on video chat with them.

[06:46 - 06:55] Hop on zoom with them and go through your first draft and then what record it and they're gonna ask questions. They're gonna be like well wait why did you like put this variable here instead of over here.

[06:56 - 07:04] And then that is something you add to your book right so. So okay so find your Sophia and like literally go over the material with them.

[07:05 - 07:13] Send it over to them have them look over it or even better go over it with zoom . If you don't know anybody in your life who wants to learn the thing you're doing.

[07:14 - 07:22] You know talk to us or like reach out and discord or like let's find someone on Reddit anywhere in the world. Find a specific person who wants to learn it and go over your material with them.

[07:23 - 07:30] Okay so after you've done that I am you should send it over to our editors. We've got a process for this I'm not gonna start gonna go over it in the video.

[07:31 - 07:41] You can look at this notion doc but basically in this step our editors will look over what you've done. They'll give you feedback you should fix their typo suggestions and then whatever suggestions they like have given you.

[07:42 - 07:49] You should tackle them and fix them. So between your mentee like looking over it and you're waiting for feedback and then our editors looking over it and you're waiting for feedback.

[07:50 - 08:02] Don't let yourself just be blocked by that right like fix your to-dos or in the earlier chapters or keep working on your next chapters. I mean your I'm sure that your work is like passively good and so just keep going.

[08:03 - 08:13] Don't let you know a few weeks slip just because you're waiting on someone else 's review. Just work in parallel and keep going either on fixing to-dos or going in the next chapter.

[08:14 - 08:23] But you'll give it to our editors they'll give you suggestions on this is you know what you need to change. Okay so then after this you've got feedback from our authors you've pushed it live.

[08:24 - 08:32] Then what you should do is you should actually share it with all of our other authors. We have a channel in Discord for authors only and it's the new lines channel.

[08:33 - 08:41] So in this channel basically the idea here is that you're able to share your work with your peers. You're going to actually take the URL of your module once it's live on new line .

[08:42 - 08:50] Paste it in here and then everyone's going to come alongside you and celebrate shipping and they can look over it. They can give you some feedback on what they think could be better.

[08:51 - 08:58] You can take it, you can ignore it. They'll tell you what they think is good which feels good to have someone that you think is smart. Look at what you read and tell you that it's good.

[08:59 - 09:11] It's basically just a way that we can like share our ideas with each other and just celebrate shipping. It's like everybody there is also going through the same struggle that you are in terms of being able to write something that like is useful to other people.

[09:12 - 09:23] And so they're just super supportive in terms of like they all realize the pain and the struggle of it and they'll also like celebrate with you. So your checklist here is your new module should be live on new line.

[09:24 - 09:34] You've pasted the URL into new lines and then you know if authors give you changes that you agree with, you should make those changes. Sometimes people will say stuff and you'll be like, "Eh, no I'm not doing that.

[09:35 - 09:37] That's fine." Use your judgment.

[09:38 - 09:44] But if they make suggestions that you like, you've made them. Okay, so then from there the next circle.

[09:45 - 09:57] So we've gone to mentee, editors, other authors. The next circle here is beta readers. So when we look at beta readers, this should be like friends and family, right?

[09:58 - 10:05] Or someone in Discord, a couple of people in Discord who are just like, or a couple of people you find on Reddit. This is maybe at max like 10 people.

[10:06 - 10:20] And these would be people that are like not necessarily you're like personal mentees, but they're people who are, we're going to give them a URL and they'll be able to log into new line and get access to your course at that URL. And it's a way to just kind of like test the work on a little bit of a broader audience.

[10:21 - 10:33] You know, being a beta reader is like time intensive for the student and typically only maybe one or two of them will finish. But it's actually really good to kind of ask them like, "Oh, when did you drop off? Why did you drop off?"

[10:34 - 10:39] Sometimes they'll just be like, "Oh, I just got busy." But sometimes it's like, "Well, I got hung up on a particular part and that helps you know what to change."

[10:40 - 10:46] Okay, so now we're actually getting into the paid section, right? So now we get to like early access.

[10:47 - 10:57] So what is early access? In on new line, we actually have a set of subscribers to New Line Pro and these folks are paying to get access to the freshest stuff.

[10:58 - 11:13] And so the key idea for early access is that your course, it doesn't have to be complete in like length, but in what you ship to them needs to be production quality. Right, so you might only have like two modules finished, but those modules need to have like gone through editing.

[11:14 - 11:29] You have like no to-dos, no missing images, you have like refined, sanded, polished, whatever you're shipping. But it doesn't need to be complete, right? Just like what you've written is really good, even though you haven't written all of it yet or recorded all of it yet.

[11:30 - 11:38] So there's a whole checklist. There's a whole section in the Notion Dock dedicated to the early access checklist. You can check it out. And then let's talk about it. Okay, next step.

[11:39 - 11:50] The real live student launch. And so in this phase, right, we're totally ready. I think it'll never feel perfect, but the way that I think about it is like you look at it and you're like, I feel good about charging money for this.

[11:51 - 12:04] Like I'm proud of what I created. I know it's good. And I would charge someone money for this and be fine with it. And so there's a lot of steps there. And again, there's a whole other dock for this, but you can go through it.

[12:05 - 12:19] So, okay, my main point here, I guess, is like, just don't go it alone. Like share your work. Everybody here wants you to succeed. We want what you're creating to be a part of the world. And like, we're just so proud of what you're writing and being able to like ship out and help people.

[12:20 - 12:31] So share your work. Everyone is going to try to help you make it better. And we want to see you succeed. So share it. We'll give you feedback. And it'll be a lot of fun. So I'll see you there.