Adapted from a note to myself, about four years ago: I suddenly thought about how I don't have the kind of fear of the unknown I used to have when it comes to writing words down or reacting to words. I know very clearly what has caused this change. It's because I have engaged in feedback workshops over the last few years: getting feedback, giving feedback, bearing others give feedback different from mine; having discussions where the goal was not to agree with each other or figure out what is right, but to see the words through the other person's eyes; constant practice in experiencing and reexperiencing what a set of words can do. Events like this: | • | I hear a particular reaction to a particular word or image and suddenly the whole piece is thrown into a different meaning. Neither mine nor the new one seems better or more complete -- merely different. | | • | Someone gets mad at a piece of writing. But then, after seeing movies of other readers' minds, he sees something he'd missed and changes his reaction completely. I end up understanding how natural it was to be mad when that piece was missing; and understanding what the writer needs to do to make sure other readers don't miss that piece. | | • | I am left cold by a piece of writing and then, through someone else's reading, suddenly the words open up for me and let me enter in, and I see things I hadn't seen. I reflect on what would have had to | | be different in the words -- or different in me -- for the writing to work on me. I conclude that there is only the slimmest chance that such a piece of writing could work for me without the extra help of fellow readers. Yet I can now nevertheless see the virtue of the writing which before I dismissed as poor. | |
omeone has a weird reaction to a set of words, but eventually we discover his reaction reflects very accurately some feeling in the writer which had nothing to do with what he was writing. The reader felt the writer mad at him, but it was just a clean, straightforward piece of explanation. No one else felt anything like that. But the writer reveals he was furious at someone at home when he was writing. The rest of us then can get a few whiffs of anger lurking behind the words. We would never have discovered the truth in that strange reaction -- the tiny ingredient in the writing that probably affects all readers even subliminally -- if we hadn't worked hard to see the words through that one reader's seemingly peculiar eyes. It must be like what a psychiatrist or therapist might feel after working years and years -- if she doesn't go numb or cynical. A sense of having seen more of people than most get a chance to see, not being shocked or frightened by what goes on. Nothing human seems alien. Yes, that's what I feel. Not shocked or dismayed at the unexpected things words can do, at the bewildering variety of ways people can react to words. It's a mystery and a mess, but now I can get inside it and see that in fact it makes sense. I don't run away from the mess any more. I'm more willing to get my hands dirty, to try and make sense of what words actually do to readers, to try and do things to people with words, to try and understand why my words succeed or fail in any given case. From a few years of writing groups I seem to have gotten something I didn't get in many years of study and teaching. The most effective way to get feedback for overall improvement of your writing and for learning about the effects of words on readers is in a writing support group that meets regularly. This is also the most enjoyable way to get feedback. You need a group of from four to ten people who have promised to come for at least eight meetings -- perhaps weekly or biweekly -- and bring a piece of writing each time. (It needen't be good writing. If someone says, "I'll bring something if I'm satisfied with it;" you haven't got a member.) It takes a while for people to get practice and to trust each other and they need to be able to count on each other to be there. You can devote all your time to feedback, but I think it helps to give a certain amount of time each meeting to sharing. You could start each session with a quick freewriting exercise and have everyone share some of it; or start with a reading of short pieces people brought with them. A simple method is to have half the group bring pieces for sharing and the other half bring pieces for feedback. This makes it easier to handle writing from a larger group. And it promotes a natural cycle: one week just share an early and perhaps exploratory draft; let it settle and work on it some more; and then get feedback on a revised version the next week. Sometimes people can give particularly helpful feedback because they heard last week's rough writing. Time. It is hard to give feedback to more than five or six pieces of writing in one sitting. You probably need fifteen minutes per piece -- longer if it must be read out loud. And much longer if you want to get into discussions rather than just listen to each other's feedback. It's important to decide at the start of each meeting how long you have and how many pieces need feedback so you can divide up the time equally. You seldom feel "done" when the time is up so a timekeeper needs to be blunt about calling time, and the group must ruthlessly move on. Otherwise the later people get cheated. You can try giving more time to longer pieces of writing but that leads to tricky computations. There is nothing wrong with the simple proposition that everyone deserves the same amount of time because everyone gives the same amount of time. Then each person gets to spend her time as she prefers -- on a long piece or a short piece. Leadership. The best sort of leadership is provided if each writer takes charge of her own time. She needs to say what she wants (for example, no negative feedback, or arguments are welcome, or whatever). It's her job to use her own time best -- ensuring, for example, that she hears from each of the readers, or that some important aspect of her writing is not neglected. The writer could, of course, delegate leadership to someone else: "Here, you take charge. I want to be free to listen and take notes." Or you could have people take turns being in charge of each meeting. Or if one person is much more experienced, she could be in charge of all meetings. But I think the writer learns more in the long runand that is the goal, after all -- if she is in charge of the feedback process for her own writing. It helps overcome the main thing that holds people back in writing: feeling helpless or powerless. If a reader doesn't seem to tell you how she reacted to your piece or wastes a lot of time saying almost nothing, or if everyone seems to neglect the aspect of your piece you are most curious about, you might at first feel awkward about pushing them a bit. But you will learn fairly quickly to ask for what you need. And it turns out that people will give it more easily when you ask for it than when some chairman" asks for it.But even though each writer should take charge of her own time it also helps to have someone else (say, the person to the left of the writer) be a kind of monitor of certain simple but crucial procedural matters. The group will hold together better and each writer will find it easier to get the feedback she needs if the monitor performs these functions: | • | keeps time; | | • | prevents anyone from talking more than her share of the time; | | • | stops arguments; | | • | points out to the writer if she is disagreeing or making excuses instead of just listening. |
For the first couple of meetings use very limited feedback if any: just summaries, telling things you liked, and pointing to passages that had resonance. And let readers toss out their feedback in bits and pieces as it occurs to them. People get more comfortable and confident in giving feedback because the spotlight isn't so much on them. But after a few weeks move to fuller feedback for those who want it and put the spotlight on each reader in turn so she can give as much feedback as possible before the next reader speaks. This is important because you are trying to find out what it is like inside the skin of individual readers, not arrive at some kind of average reaction or consensus opinion. Your message to each reader should be I need to know what it was like being you as you read my words." Don't be satisfied till you get that. After a while you will. After all the readers have given feedback, they may have more reactions that occur to them on the basis of having heard the others. If there is time and inclination you can have a discussion at this point instead of just individual statements. And the writer can now at last respond and say some things of her own instead of just listening and drawing out readers. For example she might want to talk about the audience and purpose she has in mind for this writing or tell what she was trying to get across or answer some questions that readers asked earlier as part of their feedback.Put the emphasis on reader-based feedback: finding out what happened in real readers. That doesn't mean you shouldn't sometimes ask for extensive criterion-based feedback (for instance when you are working on something you are about to revise), but make sure to get the reader-based reactions that lie beneath any piece of criterion-based feedback.No arguments. When people start to argue you know something is wrong because there is nothing to argue about. There is no right answer to defend, no wrong answer to defeat. The only goal is to learn what happened in each reader. Afterward the writer may want to decide for herself which of two conflicting reactions is most likely to occur in her target audience, but right now her job is to learn those reactions and if possible even to experience them. Arguments will interfere with her doing so.It's worth taking the last five minutes of each session for everyone briefly to tell one thing she liked and one thing she felt could have gone better in the meeting. It's not a time to discuss these things or try to solve problems. But with just these brief comments, most problems about bow the group functions will in fact solve themselves. |
