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How to give feedback that is tender and generative

How to give feedback that is tender and generative
Photo by Micah Boswell / Unsplash

I transitioned from part-time to full-time teaching this year, which means the time I could devote to my own writing was significantly reduced.  In anticipation of the change in workload, I spent the months before the new school year finishing a manuscript I’d been writing for the past ten years.  Then, I could use whatever creative energy I had left after prepping and teaching and reading papers to just focus on editing my manuscript. 

By the end of the first quarter of school, I had reworked, reordered and revised my manuscript to a point where I no longer knew how else to tweak my writing to make it better.  But I knew my manuscript wasn’t quite “there” yet.  I learned about an opportunity to have a consultation with the writer Lidia Yuknavitch, where she would read the entire manuscript, give me 10 pages of written feedback, and schedule a Zoom meeting to discuss her feedback.  At this point, my husband was the only person who had read the entire work and though he is my best reader – intelligent, thoughtful, and constructive – he is also my least impartial reader, knowing the backstory and context to everything I write, because the work is a collection of personal essays. So I held my breath and mailed the manuscript to Lidia.  She said she would be in touch in 6-8 weeks. 

Meanwhile, in the creative writing workshops I taught at school, I was at the point in the year when I guided the students on how to offer each other kind, but useful feedback.  This can be a very delicate endeavor.  First of all, it’s difficult to produce creative work – it’s fun, but it’s also difficult, especially as a young person, because it can be so personal.  Secondly, it’s difficult to share this personal, creative work because it makes you feel vulnerable.  Lastly, it’s difficult to receive feedback that isn’t positive because it can feel hurtful and embarrassing. 

So, how to teach students to read each other’s work and simultaneously celebrate the sparkly things on the page and offer constructive feedback?  I have a set of workshop guidelines that I’ve used for years – beyond the usual classroom norm to treat each other with respect, creative spaces require participants to be even more sophisticated human beings: to meet risk with risk; to critique the work not the person; ultimately, to expect a lack of closure.  Students who choose to take creative writing are usually already sensitive to this way of being and our workshop guidelines are a set of reminders, rather than something I’m teaching.  But it does take practice to both offer one’s creative work to peers and to receive a peer’s work with grace.  My feedback instructions are simple:

1.    Read with care and begin with a logline that summarizes the work. (Ex: This is a story about ____ who wants ____ but ____ gets in the way.) 

2.  Celebrate the beautiful things on the page, and be specific about what is dazzling.  (Ex. “I loved how you used color to describe your main character’s emotions.”)

3.  Ask specific questions that will invite the writer to consider alternatives and options.  Where were you confused?  How might the writer illuminate the shadowy bits? 

Students are deft at 1 & 2, but often struggle with 3.  Perhaps it’s a combination of their being polite and afraid of sharing their own ideas.  I’ve noticed that it also takes practice for young writers to want to go into editing mode.  They love to generate, and now that the hard work of producing something has been accomplished, they don’t have the energy or will to return. Perhaps it’s a function of youth, too.  You’re still too young to go back anywhere. 

After 8 weeks, I heard from Lidia – the promised 10-page written feedback as well as a scheduled Zoom call to talk through her critique.  I’d read some of Lidia’s writing, and I’d taken an asynchronous online workshop with her before, but I’d never met her.  Her 10 pages of feedback read like a letter from an old friend, and our Zoom call, a long-awaited reconnection with someone who understood me and asked poignant questions that both moved and inspired.  After our call, I couldn’t wait to return to my manuscript. 

How did Lidia do it? 

Just like my instructions to my students, she started with a logline, summarizing the heart of my work, how she read it and what was coming through for her.  And similarly, she then followed this with all the things she loved about my writing.  What’s different about her step 3 was that she framed her critique as “generative opportunities.”  Lidia was very specific about where the tangled bits were in my writing, and she used beautiful questions to breathe space into those knots (Can memory be a real place?  Can language?  Can motherhood?).  And then she continued with three more steps to her feedback, which I’ve since been able to emulate and incorporate into my workshop instructions to my students. 

At the end of each year, I create a survey and ask my students to tell me which writing assignments they loved, which ones they detested, which workshop model they got the most from (1:1, small group, whole class, or written feedback a la Lidia Yuknavitch).  This year, the majority of them shared that their favorite form of feedback was the written one inspired by Lidia.  I think it’s because it felt both tender – like they were being seen and appreciated – and generative – they were given concrete direction for how/where to ask better questions, to imagine a different possibility. 

I’m sharing my now expanded feedback guidelines below because I believe it is applicable not just if you’re a writer or an artist working on a project.  You could use it when you’re organizing a gathering, preparing a presentation, perhaps even when you're planning for the future. I can imagine this as a generative and collaborative exercise for couples and families.  Maybe it could be a way to encourage aging parents to craft their living will together. It is a way to consider what you are trying to relay and structure the emotional nodes of your story into a plane that makes sense, like creating a 2D drawing from a 3D object. 

How to give feedback that is tender & generative:

1.    Read with care and offer the logline.  What is this thing about?  What is its heart?

2.  Celebrate the beautiful things/what’s already working? What are the must-keeps?

3.  Offer generative opportunities in the form of specific questions.

4.  What are the main themes/images? 

5.   What is the intended experience? 

6.  What is the closing?  How is the experience tracking towards this close? 

More on Lidia Yuknavitch’s writing and workshops.