. I met Joni online a few months back when I promised to review her book. Let me just say that it’s a “MUST READ” for anyone who is considering the career as a writer and for every writer looking for healing from toxic feedback. It’s one of those books that makes you wish you could meet the author in person, take a few of her workshops, and then spend the weekend with her in a writers' retreat chatting about everything writing-related. When I finished her book, I knew I just had to ask her a few questions that would give you real insight into what you’d find in her book and boy did she deliver!
Feedback, critiques, and rejections can be a writer's worst nightmare. What advice can you offer writers for preparing for the worst?
I’ll start with advice when it comes to receiving feedback and critiques. (I put rejection in a category all its own!) As a writer, you can make the feedback process a whole lot easier by remembering something so obvious it is often overlooked—you are the boss of your own story. Not the other writer in your critique group who is always telling you to add more sex scenes or car chases. Not your spouse or mother. And not even authority figures like your workshop instructor or teacher with the fancy literary prize—all of whom can offer invaluable insights about the writing process, but who can also be dead wrong.
Once you acknowledge that you are the boss of your own story, suddenly you feel much less defensive about feedback, even when you are in the hot seat. You can listen, really listen. You can stop defending every sentence or word choice. You can take in all the suggestions and criticism and compliments that come at you, weighing them against your own editorial instincts and knowing that, in the end, it is your choice what aspects of the feedback (if any) you use. After all, that is the beauty of feedback—you can take it or leave it, depending on what you feel is in service to the story.
BUT that’s not to say that during the feedback session, you should simply sit there, smiling beatifically while someone trashes your work, or leaves you feeling at a loss. As writers, we shouldn’t just submit to feedback and hope for the best. Our goal should not be to prepare for the worst. Our goal should be to manage the process so that the feedback interaction isn’t toxic or a waste of our time; so that it offers us real insight about our work. Here is just one example of how you, the writer, could manage a potentially toxic feedback interaction.
Say a feedback provider tells you he doesn’t like your main character. You could leave it at that, but what have you learned? How do you revise so that the reader likes your main character? Rather than let it go at that, and likely leave the session feeling demoralized, a better strategy is to ask the feedback provider open-ended questions; probe further to help him articulate the reasons behind his judgment. This strategy also helps take the sting out of vague, negative feedback, because most of us can handle specifics; it’s the generalities that bring us to our knees. Here’s an example of what I mean.
- Feedback Provider (FB): “I just didn’t like your main character. She didn’t work for me.”
Writer (managing the feedback interaction): “Why not. What made you not like her?”
FB: “Well, she was mean and I don’t like mean people.”
W: “What do you mean she was mean? What made you think that?”
FB: “Oh come on! She ran over her boyfriend with her pickup truck!”
W: “So what didn’t you like about that?”
FB: “It didn’t make sense. I don’t get it. A page earlier, she told her boyfriend she loved him, so why would she run over him a few paragraphs later. That was really mean.”
Asking open-ended questions is just one way to turn potentially toxic feedback into useful insights that can actually help you write more, writer better, and even be happier (because what writer isn’t happier when she is writing more and writing better). In the book I offer all sorts of tips on how writers can make every session a helpful, even positive experience. After all, as the most vested person in the feedback interaction, why wouldn’t the writer want to take responsibility for making the most of the exchange.
And finally…my advice for preparing for rejection… Hmm? I’m hardly the most emotionally stable person when it comes to this topic, but here’s a passage from my book about dealing with rejection, and I’ll stick by it.
Illegitimi Non Carborundum (from the pseudo-Latin, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down). Intellectually, you know when a publisher rejects your work it might not have anything to do with whether it’s good or bad. Getting published is as much about fit as quality—hitting up the right publisher at the right time. Understanding this, however, still doesn’t stop you from feeling depressed when you recognize that SASE in your mailbox. One thing that does help, however, is commiserating with other talented writers who are amassing their own paper logs of rejections, some of them even bigger than yours.”
I've been on both ends of the stick and I can say with certainty that I don't make a good critique partner. What quick tips can you offer those who go overboard with criticism or niceties?
Tip one: Don’t get carried away with your constructive criticism. At certain fragile stages in the drafting process, writers can choke on a crumb. So only give them half a crumb. It’s a scientific fact, humans can only process so much information in one sitting before experiencing a mental meltdown. So don’t inundate. Writers can’t fix everything all at once anyway. We build stories draft by draft by draft… so your feedback can simply focus on the one or maybe two issues the writer needs to know right then, at that stage in the work’s development, to move forward.
As conscientious feedback providers, it actually helps to know that writers are often served by less, not more criticism, because it removes this tremendous weight from our shoulders. It’s a relief to know we are not failing in our jobs, just because we don’t point out every flaw in every draft—from the jumpy structure to the preponderance of dialogue tags. Plus, it’s important to recognize that even if the writer only focuses on improving one aspect of the text per draft, say characterization, likely her plot and will improve along the way, as well, since character drives plot.
Another tip about offering criticism. Above all, first tell the writer what is working in the story and why. The point of this positive feedback is not simply to be nice (though what’s wrong with being nice?). The point of positive feedback is that writers actually learn more when you articulate the successful elements of their works-in-progress. In this way, you help a writer build her story or poem from its strengths up, rather than from its deficits down. And in both types of feedback, positive and constructive, remember to be specific!
As far as going overboard with niceties… I’m all for gushing; I encourage it, actually. As feedback providers (and as parents, bosses, friends, and human beings, in general) I think you should be generously, enthusiastically, and unbegrudingly forthcoming with your praise. If someone asks you to express your opinion about her work and you like it, or like parts of it, don’t let the opportunity to spread a little good news pass you by. At the very least, make a point to acknowledge the effort it took for that writer to get something down on the page, and the courage it took to share it with you in the hopes of making it better.
Some writers have been hurt with bad feedback years ago, yet those words still haunt them today. What advice can you offer to help them put the past where it belongs?
Get more feedback!
Keep company with other writers. Take writing classes. Start your own workshop or critique group—(and yes, despite the “feeding frenzy” behavior typical of so many groups, it is possible to have a supportive and fun writing group—the back third of my book offers a few simple guidelines.) My feeling is that the more you share your work with readers, and the more you engage in the feedback process and manage the interaction, and the more you surround yourself with other working writers who can offer everything from constructive criticism to kudos to commiseration, the easier it becomes to put toxic feedback from the past into perspective. Virtually every writer in the world has experienced toxic feedback at some point in their writing lives. The key is to never let it stop you.
Visit her at: ToxicFeedback.com
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