Feedback

Asking for, giving and receiving feedback

I have started back teaching the creative writing this year in Caroline Springs and have added in a group in Kensington. While the Kensington group is a new for me as a facilitator, it’s not new for me altogether. It was here that I honed my love of writing when I had only two little children before pursuing it more seriously at RMIT.  It was so lovely to see my Caroline Springs writers again to hear about how their summer has gone, and what they’ve been reading and writing. It was equally lovely to reacquaint myself with some familiar faces in Kensington, and to meet new ones and hear about what everyone’s writing plans are.

I started both of the groups with a session on feedback as this is one of the most crucial things as a writer. Asking for, giving and receiving feedback are a crucial part of being a writer. The more you do it, the better your writing becomes. There was a time when I would hear feedback on my writing from others and it would sting so hard. One of the things about doing it more is that I get better at removing myself from the words and take the feedback on as just that – feedback. However, I (like most creative people) suffer from a terrible case of the imposter syndrome).

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you.

—Neil Gaiman, author (Address to the University of the Arts Class of 2012)

There are three sides to feedback:

  • asking for feedback
  • giving feedback
  • receiving feedback.
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Twenty-eight days 

28

Beware. This is a ‘journey’ post.

Twenty-six days ago I was sitting in my psychologist’s office (not something I would have done, or admitted to a couple of years ago, but now I wonder how people survive without brain dumping on someone who can help you sort out all the brain mess). We were talking self care and how it would be good for me to try to incorporate it into my every day (instead of an extraordinary occasion) with the view to chat about it when we caught up again in 28 days. She was concerned that I had stopped writing, that I had given up on the idea of my words making any sense, and that I wouldn’t allowed myself to look at my manuscript I had saved all the way back in November last month.

So, being a listy kind of person I knew it would start with a list.

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Facing off criticism

“If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.” Malcom X

Criticism is hard. I don’t know anyone who gets excited about criticism. But it’s what we do with the criticism that can make all the difference.

One of the things that I’ve learnt so far in my two and half years in a professional writing and editing course is that criticism comes thick and fast. Each time I workshop a piece – when I make myself ridiculously vulnerable – I open myself up to 20 odd different views on what worked, and what didn’t. Each time I get too cocky that I’ve ‘got it’, I’m brought back down to reality – there can always be more done to my work.

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