Oh! My Eyes! (Or: The Perils of Critiquing)

Maybe you've figured out by now that Cranky Rah is fond of her cave. It's quiet. Solitary. Adorned with paintings of earthy colored dun horses and aurochs and what may be a cave hyena. Those weird angular petroglyphs on the walls? They translate into the Kafka: Even night is not night enough.

That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

Did I mention it's quiet?

And, yet, Cranky Rah does come out on occasion. On Fridays, for tacos. On the last Thursday of each month for the James River Writers Writing Show. And of course to hang with The Three every month or so and find out what they've been working on and to throw some crazy freewrites their way.

You know what they say about the road being paved with good intentions, right? I'm pretty sure it's The road to summer is paved with good intentions. Because The Three and I had every intention of getting together every month this summer to talk and share writing.

Then life got in the way.

But even though we never got together, everyone kept writing. And we all used this miraculous technology called e-mail to share with each other. This is way better than how we did it in the Stone Age.

One of the advantages of e-mail sharing to a reader is that you can read, ponder and then reply with feedback at your leisure. One of the advantages of e-mail sharing to a writer is that is you can cry in private when you read the feedback.

I'm just kidding. We never cry. Really.

The truth, though, shockingly, is that giving other writers feedback on their work can be intimidating. Ditto on receiving feedback yourself. And honestly, sometimes you'll whiff it. Sometimes your feedback will hurt someone's feelings or be totally off-base. (With continued apologies to my dear friend Neurotic K.)

Sometimes, you won't take the feedback well yourself. You'll take it personally. You'll feel like you were just stabbed. You'll be sure the world is ending, and you'll be tempted to crawl, whimpering, back into the darkness of your own cave.


But don't. I promise that feedback can be your friend.

Here's the mantra when you're giving feedback: Be specific, but be kind.

Under the Be specific portion: "It was really neat" isn't particularly helpful. Calling out words and phrases gives the writer an idea of what she's doing right and what resonates with you, the reader. Like this:

I liked the way you described the sounds and smells of the attack, especially snarling and when Margot says, "It's true that blood really does taste like iron!"

Under Be kind: It doesn't matter if the person you're reading for is your best friend. Hearing critique can be really hard—even and especially from best friends. So be kind but truthful. If something doesn't work for you, think about why. Don't write Dude, that Mephistopheles is like such a nosy, goody-two-shoes. Try I wonder what experience Mephistopheles had that makes him think that deal with the Devil is a good idea?

For a good starter set of the types of topics you can think about when crafting your feedback, check out the critique tips from Short Story Group. Dinna fash (that's Scots for don't worry): Your feedback doesn't have to cover all the topics discussed in the article or even be excruciatingly detailed. For just general feedback, you can stick with this rule of thumb:

1. Tell the writer something you liked in the piece.
2. Tell the writer something you'd like to see expanded, explained or worked on.
3. End with a compliment.

And before you hit send on that e-mail, shooting it off into the great Netherworld where it cannot be retrieved and changed, reread it one last time and ask yourself how you would feel if you were the one about to read it.

What about when you're the writer who's just split blood all over the page and now has to read that maybe, just maybe, something didn't quite work or could be improved?

First, take a deep breath and remember that the human body has between three and five liters of blood, so you really aren't going to die. Then, be open-minded. You might be amazed at what great ideas can come out of other people's feedback. I once threw a six-year-old girl out of a tree because of some feedback. (Thank you, Neurotic K!) It was such a little thing (well, not for the girl), and yet it totally opened up the story I was writing, tied into a crippled bird motif running through the book and got that little girl injured (she needed to be) in just the right way.

Remember that in the end, you're the one writing this world. Take what works for you; discard what doesn't. But really think about each comment, and if you reject it, have a good reason.

(No little girls were injured in the writing of this blog.)