How to Use Feedback Properly

While on a jog the other day, a biker passed me. Per the trail's rules, he called out, "On your left." But then he followed up with: "You've got a good pace." 

I'm not even sure if this second comment was directed at me, but I heard it as if it was. And instead of buoying me and making me run stronger, I spent the next five minutes of my jog mentally deconstructing my pace and trying to figure out if it was, indeed, a good pace.

This deconstruction of my pace and the ensuing distraction from my run led me to consider the following:

Feedback can be the best thing for your writing, and feedback can be the worst thing for your writing.

So in light of that epiphany, I came up with five ways to properly accept feedback.

1. Ask for feedback only when you are ready to hear it.

There have been times when a writing compliment has taken me by surprise. Sometimes, it has been exactly what I needed to drag me out of the Pit of Despair. Yet, there have also been times when a compliment has distracted me from my writing by giving me a "free pass" for ignoring a part of my writing that I have "right."

If I send a chapter I'm proud of to my critique group and it comes back with red ink all over it, I often find myself demoralized. Here's this chapter I thought was ready to go and looking good, and people tell me they can't understand the sentences I wrote? They must be wrong! No, instead I've realized that I am not ready to read feedback offered to me until I've checked my pride at the door. Sometimes it takes me awhile to look at comments after I've received them.

On the flip side, sometimes I send out a chapter which I'm insecure and uncertain about. Usually I do this when I don't know where else to go with the scene, sometimes because I've run out of time. But almost invariably, when I examine the feedback offered, I am encouraged and more accepting of the scene's faults.

2. Value good feedback.

Proper feedback requires that you check your pride and accept there may be something wrong with your work. If you think you're the sliced bread of the written word, you aren't going to listen to how you can improve the dough recipe or your slicing technique. You have to accept that something could be significantly wrong with your peice--and you have to be willing to make the changes.

If you ask for feedback with the attitude that your scene needs hardly any work, and that you know better than the other writers (or readers) examining your work, then chances are you won't be accepting the true value of the feedback offered to you.

3. Recognize poor feedback.

Undoubtedly, once you start asking for feedback, you will receive some comments that are invalid or inappropriate for your work (sometimes just plain incorrect). Because you are the author, you are the only one to know where you are going. You have the responsibility, as the author, to recognize the value or lack of value of the feedback you have received. A lot of this comes from experience, and from knowing what is true to your characters and your plot. While you must keep that in mind, you also must keep in mind that if one or two comments/questions pop up from each reader, you have an issue that probably needs to be addressed.

4. Give feedback. 

This may seem like an odd suggestion, but you learn a lot by picking apart your critique group's writing (in a constructive way, of course). Being able to recognize grammatical mistakes in another's writing is the first step in being able to see it in yours. This is true for other types of writing mistakes: plot holes, lack of characterization, overuse of certain words, etc. Some people like to dive into a new skill without a lesson, but those that study hard and build a foundation attain a higher level of skill faster. Giving feedback to other aspiring writers builds your writing foundation as you actively apply what you learn about writing.

5.  Read prolifically.

Reading has a direct effect on your writing. Next time you reread a favorite book, pay attention to more than your enjoyment of it. Why does it work so well? What are the turning points of the characters? How are the characters developed? How well does the language flow? What could that author have done better? If you were the author, how would you write the novel? 

Similar to giving feedback, it is easier to see faults in another's work, but when you read a published work, you are reading something that worked for at least one other person (if traditionally published). And if you never reread books, know that even bad books have something to teach you (usually bad books can teach you more). 

Allow yourself to be taught, and you will be surprised by how much you learn.

~I.E.

Confidence (and April's Insecure Writer's Support Group)

C is for Confidence

Since today is the third day of the blogging A to Z challenge, but it also happens to be the first Wednesday of the month, which is the Insecure Writer's Support Group day, I decided to combine these two and post about my insecurity: lack of confidence.

I've been part of a writing forum for about six months now, and it has its ups and downs. Most recently, I've been quite down about it. This has arisen from one feedback I've given which gave me a proverbial slap in the face by suggesting that my personal beliefs had no bearing in the feedback I was giving. In other words, my personal beliefs should have nothing to do with how a particular scene comes across to me. In all honesty, I find that to be quite wrong.

Every reader brings their personal beliefs, backgrounds and experiences to a novel. I believe that a book is more personal than a movie. A reader spends more time on a book than a movie, and if the situations or the morals in that book or movie clash directly with the reader's morals, most likely there will be some dissatisfaction. Some readers are able to attribute the actions to an unlikable protagonist and read the book without agreeing with what happens, but there's a trick to that, which is not my point in this post. (E.g. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which has an unlikable narrator.)

Dissatisfaction with a story can occur if a conservative or liberal reader reads a book which goes directly against their morals. A reader may put those books down if bothered enough by them, and a writer may have lost a reader. No author is for everyone. An author I adore, another reader may hate. As long as a reader can give a reason for their likes or dislikes, it's not wrong to love or hate a book. That's the joy of having so many books to explore.

But this incident has severely shaken my confidence and given me a huge insecurity in offering my feedback. Almost to the point where I don't want to give it at all. If my personal views are irrelevant to my feedback, then what am I left with giving? Merely grammatical edits? Is that all I am allowed to say? For my personal beliefs, interests and past experiences undoubtedly influence how I see a character, how I feel about them, and whether I believe them to be realistic characters. In fact, my personal beliefs, interests and past experiences are what makes up me. 

So I'm left with a difficult situation in giving feedback. And that is: How can I divorce myself from my opinion? If I knew someone like this "unlikable" character in the past, I won't like this character unless there is change. If the author asks for feedback on whether their character is likable and I see them as particularly unlikable for their beliefs, their actions or their personality, what can I say? Do I just not say anything at all? 

#IWSG Alex J. Cavanaugh's page

~I.E.

Getting Over Your Fear of Feedback

If you had told me when I first started writing that I would share my writing online with strangers and ask them to tear my work apart, I probably would have laughed at you.

The first few months (okay, years) of posting my work for feedback was, well, terrifying. My first real interaction with peer feedback was through F2K, a free fiction writing course given through Writers' Village University (WVU), where the slogan is "Writers helping writers."

I don't think I first realized just how much that slogan is true. But now that I've gone through F2K and joined the parent site, WVU, the words resonate with me. Giving your WIP to a friend to read is great, but if your friend isn't a writer or editor, they are going to miss a lot of things. Conversely, putting a chapter of my WIP up on an online forum of other writers guarantees that they are going to see something I missed. They aren't just going to tell me "I like it," or "I don't like it," but they're going to tell me why. That's how writers help writers. They explain what works and what doesn't work. And most importantly, how it can be fixed.

As I continued posting my work, first through F2K, and then finally screwing up my courage to begin posting a WIP that I'd worked on for years, it was tough. Tougher than tough. 

Every time I went to post a new chapter, I would spend hours and hours upon those 2000-4000 words. I would take a fine-tooth comb to them, and I would rewrite the same sentences dozens of times. I would doubt my characters, the actions the characters made, my plot... I would doubt that I could even write, that I could ever make it. I would think no one wanted to read this. The list goes on. Every writer's insecurity about their work, I probably had.

But my challenge didn't end with pressing the "post" button. I would finally find the courage to post, and then I couldn't bear to look at the feedback! *insert shamed face here* I'd thought I'd conquered my fear of posting--then it would seem so much more terrifying to read others' thoughts about my writing! I would be afraid it would be less than flattering, it would destroy the little confidence I had, or that others just "wouldn't get it." 

I was unable to face the truth about my work and preferred to live in my bubble where it was "safe."

This went on for months. Literally, months.

I still have some of those early scenes, unedited from some of the most useful feedback I've probably received, because I just can't screw up the courage to look at my faults full in the face. (And yes, there were most definitely faults in those scenes, some obvious and certain, others more subjective.)

It took me a long time before I finally realized what was happening. 

I was letting myself get too close to a scene.

It happens to all of us. We love our "darlings," we love our scene, our plot (or lack thereof)... We have embraced this story inside of us until it demanded release. Then we release it and think there could be nothing wrong with it--simply because we like it. And there certainly couldn't be a structural issue, or a flood of typos which make reading it a chore rather than a pleasure.

But when I couldn't bear to look at the feedback other writers had so graciously given me, choosing rather to ignore the most valuable tool in my writer's handbook, I had to do some searching. Searching inside myself, not online, not in books, not anywhere else. 

Where did this fear of feedback come from?

Well, for me, I think it's perfectionism. That dreaded desire to be infallible. Pride, to put it bluntly. Instead of acknowledging that I was still growing as a writer, I chose to shut my eyes to the very thing that could help me grow.

You see, by trying to have a "perfect" piece of writing, I failed utterly. Every time I posted, there was always something I had missed. Sometimes big things, sometimes just small things. But always something. 

This started to wreck my confidence.


It's been a long time coming, but I am finally starting to realize that I am more blinded to my own work than I think.

I admit it. I have a critical eye--of both myself and others. Yet I may read a sentence of my own creation and think it makes sense because I know what I want to say. Then I pass that sentence to someone else, and it doesn't make sense at all. In fact, it may be a sentence that I'm immensely proud of for the specific word choice I used, or the metaphor I so majestically laced through it (ha ha). Then the feedback comes in telling me to cut that sentence because it distracts or doesn't make a lick of sense. *sigh*

You see, I need those other sets of eyes to tell me, "I don't know what you are trying to say here." Or, "This has potential, but it's not fully developed." Or, "I need more description here. I can't see the scene you're describing." Or even, "I thought there were only two people in this scene now there's three?"

You get my point. Each writer knows what they are trying to show. But only by sharing your writing with someone else can you see what you're actually showing. And if it works.


Pride is no easy thing to turn your back on.

I can say the right words, acknowledge my shortcomings, but when someone blatantly (even if kindly) points them out to me, it wounds my ego.

I haven't completely conquered my fear of feedback yet. Not by a long shot. But I have been able to distance myself from my scenes much quicker than I did a few months ago. 

Instead of spending days editing 2000 words so that they might be "acceptable" to post, I spend a few hours and hit the "post" button before I can stop myself. I've accepted that there WILL be something wrong with it. 

Absolutely, definitely, most certainly, something will be wrong.

I've realized that every single time I spent days and days and hours upon hours editing the same scene, those were the scenes that came back torn to bits. Those were the scenes that everyone had found something big wrong with--sometimes each seemed to find a different thing wrong. Those were the scenes that needed a total rewrite. How frustrating, embarrassing, debilitating!

Lately, I've taken the tact of admitting straight up: "Here's my next chapter. I'm not really liking it. I don't know why. Help." Or "I have to post this before I tear it up and start all over again." I'm taking my pride down a notch. And although my pride doesn't like, I do. There's no place for pride when you want to grow.

When you go in with less pride, less ego, you have more room to grow. 

You can see what needs work, and you can take it to heart. You can improve. 

When you think there's nothing wrong with your work, you undermine yourself. You hinder yourself from growing. Even the best authors need a reader's feedback. Even the best authors need an editor.

So how do you get over your fear of feedback?

My answer for this is two-fold.

1. Throw pride out the window where it belongs.

2. Bite the bullet and press that post button--it will never be "perfect."

The Rose Among the Thorns (WEverb Day 5)

5. fellowship [HOPE]: What community has engaged you most this year and what did it you get out of your participation?

This year has been a year of significant growth for me as a writer. I credit this to the unprecedented feedback that I've received from the writing community at Writers' Village University. 

I've been a member of this group for just over a year now, but I was too timid to use the novel writing forums on the website and post my own novel in its entirety (chapter by chapter, that is, not all at once). But this fall, after a year's membership at WVU, I took a deep breath, and posted my first chapter.

Feedback was overall encouraging. And that was something that I think I needed at this point in my writing. Not to say that my posted chapter was perfect--it was far from it. But the feedback I received gave useful, informed suggestions, many of which I could use. And having multiple sets of eyes really does make a difference. I was stunned with what I missed by being so close to my writing.

Like most (if not all) writers, having someone read your work is both what you long for and what you fear the most. The idea that others won't be enchanted by your characters, or what you meant to express so eloquently came out as over-writing...or a million other of your biggest fears cross your mind the moment before you hit "submit." But you must get over that hurdle. Press the button, and give your writing over to fresh eyes.

Photo Source.

Then comes the waiting. Sometimes, you get your answer right away. And usually, it's not nearly as gushy as you want. But if you can bear to look, you find that there are roses among the thorns. And those rose are some of the most fragrant flowers you've ever smelled, because they offer you hope.

You see, interspersed with words that hurt, pointing out your flaws and shortcomings, are the other words. The words that stick with you longer than the prick of a thorn. These words are the sweet fragrance of flattery. 

I've realized this year, that although the thorns hurt and can draw blood, it's the fragrance I remember. It's the people who validate my writing, and in doing so, validate the fact that I can do this. They have become my cheerleaders, and I hope I'm theirs as well.