Heh. What I had to learn was distance; I was that novice writer not making my characters flawed enough, but because I loved them too much. It took me a long, long time to get over that and to think about characters and plots more neutrally and see the flaws in them from birth as well as the ones I put there.

You're right, though, that quite often what a writer needs to learn is not to let her mother, or neighbor, or whoever, look over her shoulder.

Aw. You will make me blush and squirm, and you don't want to do that, do you?