More Thoughts: Giving and Receiving Feedback

In the podcast episode I put out last week, I went on a tangent about giving and receiving feedback, and I feel like I really, truly cannot express enough how gosh dang important it is to any and all communication, and creating in community especially.

Feedback, when done well, is a delicate balance: putting enough distance between yourself and the piece on the objective side, while remembering that the person who made the piece is a person on the subjective side. A person has feelings, and - from one person-with-feelings to another - they rarely have a choice in the matter of which ones they’ll experience.

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Ideally, you and whoever you’re doing feedback with have already come to an agreement on what it’ll look like in practice, which is even more important if you’re not super familiar with the other person. If not (and it’s happened to me where we just jump straight in and hope for the best!), here’s some things I’ve found helpful when receiving feedback:

• Read it, then leave it. It doesn’t matter what reactionary emotions come up when you first receive your feedback, but understanding that they will. Stepping away to process and come back with fresher eyes can give you better clarity and reasoning when you read the feedback again.

• Assume positive intent, and approach with curiosity. Even if you know them, someone’s tone can still be difficult to parse when written, like something sounding much harsher on the page than if they’d said it out loud. Stepping away, as just mentioned, can also help give you time to remember this. And - ask questions! If it’s still hitting in a way that confuses and you want to figure it out, asking for clarification could lead to interesting conversations on mechanics or vibes (my favourite!!!).

• Take what you need. Ultimately, you’re the creator of the work, and in most cases have the last word on what you’ll change based on feedback (if you decide to change anything at all). It can be hard to take this advice if you’re a people-pleasing kind of person, but if you try something and it’s just not jiving, then it’s not for you. Give yourself permission to keep only what resonates.

• Thank them for their time. No matter what you get back from someone, they made space in their day to read and consider your work, which is a big deal! That’s awesome! There are a million other things they could be doing! Even if their feedback is similar to other notes you receive, that gives more importance to the observations, and the greater possibility it’ll also be noticed by a larger audience (whether you intend them to or not).

When giving feedback, I try and keep the following in mind:

• Examples of questions I ask myself:

  • Are they looking for specific feedback?

  • Do I know of any works that are successful in what they’re trying to accomplish?

  • Is there another form (poem, novelette, screenplay, essay, etc) they could try?

  • What biases am I bringing to my reading and feedback, and can/should they be addressed?

• Assume positive intent, and approach with curiosity. Yes, this is the same point from the last section. Yes, it is absolutely still important. In the same vein as “read it, then leave it”, take a step back to notice what your reactions are to the piece, and what that can say about your experience and knowledge that could be applied to other readers. So much of feedback (and everything, really) is about the grey shades of human perspective, and how it informs us as readers and writers.

• Say the hard thing. This one’s for my anxiety babes out there. Even if you can’t really explain or have the language for what you want to convey, or think what you’re going to tell them might hurt their feelings: try. Your insight and suggestions are valuable, because of human perspective as mentioned in the last point, and also because it helps you become a better communicator overall. As a (former? Meds help lol) anxiety babe myself, it’s helpful for me to think about what might be lost if I don’t say the thing. I know little bits of feedback from others stick around in my head, and make my writing much stronger in the long run.

• How do I turn this into a question? That’s what we did in workshops for the creative writing program I was in, but it’s also a key lesson I learned from coaching training: state the observation if needed for context, then follow with a question that leaves more space for open, thoughtful answers. It might look something like, “The setting was really interesting and I love the detail, but I felt disconnected to the narrator/main character. How could they interact with the setting more, and what would it feel like in their body?”

Also, a side note, because it amazes me how this still keeps happening even though it doesn’t need to be said: Don’t give feedback if someone hasn’t asked for it. Free speech and free will is not an invitation to disrupt another person’s peace.

There’s an incredible amount of tangents I can go on to further expand all the points listed above (nuance and complexity, always! This post is assuming SO much positive intent, and conflict resolution is like a whole field - lean on peers and mentors for how to address within community), but I can already feel myself struggling to keep up the momentum for this post, and I need to honour actually being able to publish it, lol.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope some of what I’ve shared is helpful :) Happy feedbacking!