Living a Life Elastic

Eleven Thoughts on Feedback

I have spent my whole adult life, more than twenty years, self-employed, and the last ten specifically as a freelance writer. Dealing with feedback has always been an important part of my job. Here are eleven things I’ve learned along the way about writing for other people.

1. The Space for the Response

Other people are allowed to dislike your work.

You know this, of course, but you don’t always act like it. Some small part of you is always quietly outraged when your Very Good Idea is met with indifference.

But there are any number of reasons the work might not be suitable, reasons invisible to you. Others are allowed to have issues with what you submit, and they will – in small ways if you’re lucky, in big ways if you’re not.

Every time you submit a piece of work, leave space in your head for the response. That doesn’t mean wasting energy on imagining criticisms before you receive them. It just means giving other people freedom to respond however they will. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in Big Magic, the reaction does not belong to you.

2. There Are Never No Notes

I think on some level, many writers are secretly waiting for the day when their genius is at last recognised and when others respond with nothing but silent awe.

Every new project, each new iteration, brings the same hidden hope: that the work is perfect, that there are no notes. But time will run out long before opinions do, and so there will be fewer and fewer notes, until the deadline looms too large to ignore.

There are never no notes. There is only no time.

3. You Are Not Perfect (And Neither Are They)

To get feedback you like is rare when you’re writing for others, and contingent on two criteria. Firstly, you. Secondly, them. Which is to say, not only do you need to be open to receiving feedback that might improve the work, but you also need to receive it from someone on your wavelength, someone who understands the decisions you’ve made along the way. If both those criteria are met, that’s a good thing. It’s going to make the work better, and it’s going to make you a better writer.

But in the vast majority of cases, you will not get a critique you agree with. You will submit imperfect work and receive imperfect feedback. So it goes.

4. It Doesn’t Matter How the Ball Got to the Spot Where It’s Resting

Every shot you make on a golf course creates a new hole. The object of the game is to get the ball from the point where it rests into the hole you’re playing in the fewest strokes possible. It doesn’t matter how the ball got to the spot where it’s resting.

– The Golfer’s Mind by Dr. Bob Rotella

Complex projects make imperfect progress, and the most efficient route will only ever be visible in hindsight. Feedback may take you backwards, may render weeks of work pointless, may mean returning to an approach you thought was best in the first place but everybody else dismissed. Progress can be clunky and frustrating.

Any golfer will tell you one bad shot can ruin a day. There’s a risk you carry the misery with you to the next shot, and the next, and that the whole thing spirals into a pit of resentment and despair. That’s where Dr. Bob comes in. It doesn’t matter how the ball got to the spot where it’s resting. All we can do is play the next shot.

5. Book The Call

Here’s an experience I’ve had repeatedly. I’ve been adamant a piece of feedback is ‘wrong,’ booked a call to discuss it, and then found myself agreeing with the criticism.

Calls about feedback are scary because they force you to confront an idea you’d rather avoid: maybe the work isn’t good enough or, worse, maybe you’re not good enough. That fear is silly and normal in equal measure, because it’s rarely a question of quality, and far more frequently a question of suitability. Part of being a professional means understanding the process of writing is iterative – and iteration, of course, means change.

But calls are generally best and in-person meetings are better still. Nuance and tone become clearer, and you’re addressed by the actual human behind the thought, rather than the seemingly soulless scorn of faceless comments and emails.

It will turn out the human is not an idiot. It will turn out they do, in fact, have a point.

6. Elasticity

Nineteenth century philosopher John Stuart Mill did not, so far as history recalls, have to deal with comments critiquing his work in Google Docs, but he writes as though he did. According to Mill, an adverse opinion, ‘may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth.’

Mill believed no single mind can hold the absolute truth. Truth can only emerge, he said, through engagement with others, and the testing of our beliefs against those we disagree with.

That’s a banger of a thought, right there, and if you want to reflect on it in a broader sense, you’ll have to do so in your own time. For our specific purposes, this means the best version of the work cannot come from you alone, and will only ever be found by actively welcoming views that challenge it. So it is, in part, your job to find Mill’s ‘portion of truth’ in all feedback. One helpful approach here is to ignore any feedback that tells you how to ‘fix’ the work, and instead focus on why it might not be landing as you intended.

And who knows? It may well turn out your initial judgement was off. Some of my best creative decisions have been born from a realisation I was wrong about something.

Aspire to elasticity.

7. The Spectrum of Disagreement

Let’s imagine you’ve received feedback, felt the inevitable knee-jerk rejection of any thoughts that run contrary to your own, considered the ways in which you might address those comments, and yet nevertheless remain in full and vehement disagreement.

That’s ok. You’re allowed to disagree. You may well be receiving feedback from people who haven’t engaged with the work in same way you have. They have a bird’s-eye view, while you are in the trenches. In the worst cases, you’ll find yourself receiving feedback from those who don’t really understand your field at all.

But disagreement costs energy. Should you disagree, you have a choice to make about how much energy you’re willing to expend.

There’s a spectrum here. At one end is pacifism: you let it go entirely. You know the feedback is to the detriment of the project, but the client can have whatever they want. At the other end is war: you sharpen your sword, ready your horse, and prepare to ride at dawn. If they do not understand then by God you will make them understand.

Where you fall on this spectrum is subject to a subtle cocktail of context, temperament and status. If you have the clout to do so, and if it really matters to you, by all means disagree with the full force of your opinion. You can afford to be more stubborn when writing for yourself than you can when you write for others. As a freelancer, you are there at the behest of those you serve, so too much hostility is often unwise. But don’t forget you are paid for your opinion, so total silence on a matter you think is important probably means you’re not doing your job as well as you could.

Nobody can tell you where to fall on this spectrum, but always keep an eye on the best use of your energy. You can spend an hour articulating the precise nature of your disagreement – explaining to everyone else in forensic detail why they’re wrong – or that same hour moving the project forwards.

How much energy is the disagreement worth?

8. The Spectrum of Ownership

Hiding beneath the Spectrum of Disagreement is a sneakier, more personal spectrum – the Spectrum of Ownership. Is this project yours? Or is it somebody else’s?

If you’re a freelancer, the unavoidable answer is it’s somebody else’s project. And that’s fine, but it doesn’t do anything to allay the feeling that it’s also somehow yours. You’ve contributed a great deal to it, shaped the direction. The work came from you and it’s good, you’re proud of it.

And yet, the longer you work on a project, the more inevitable the day when your input gets changed or cut altogether. In the worst cases, you’re removed from the project entirely, left to wonder what became of everything you contributed.

So do you guard against this possibility by never properly investing in the first place? Or do you expose yourself to the heartbreak and fully commit? Is it just a job? Or is it something more important? Could it be, in fact, your art?

There’s no optimal perspective here, since all writers, all people, are different, and you can’t really choose how you feel about a project. But whichever direction you tend to fall, it can be healthy to lean in the other. If there is a flawed approach, it will be found at the extremes.

9. Don’t Defend the Work

Roy Peter Clark’s excellent book, Writing Tools, gives us a wonderful piece of advice for dealing with feedback. Don’t defend the work, he tells us, but rather explain it. Explain the choices you made along the way and the reasons why you made them.

‘The reflex to defend your work is a force of nature,’ he writes, and cautions us against that reflex. The act of explaining paves the way for a better discussion.

Those giving feedback would benefit from heeding this advice from the opposite perspective. The most fundamental courtesy you can extend to a writer is the presumption they wrote with intent. All constructive conversation follows from that one basic kindness.

10. Matters of Taste

Here’s a piece of advice so old it’s in Latin. ‘De gustibus non est disputandum.’ In matters of taste, there can be no disputes.

There is no greatest colour, no prettiest flower, no such thing as the best ice-cream flavour. These are matters of taste, and it’s incredibly helpful to distinguish them from matters of execution. They are rarely so obvious as discussions on colour. On the contrary, they can be tricky to spot since they often get tangled up in more nuanced conversations, and people may discuss them with the same kind of rigour they use for more objective arguments – so keep a weather eye open.

Not everything has an optimal solution. If a discussion relates solely to taste, beware: nobody will be correct (and everybody will), so you’ll probably end up deferring to the most senior person involved. And that’s fine. It happens all the time.

11. Be Kind

Feedback can never be helpful if all it does is agree. To receive feedback is, by necessity, to invite a contrary opinion. This framework naturally suggests a kind of battleground – you versus them – and it’s all too easy to fall into that narrative, casting yourself on the side of the righteous.

But I believe most feedback on creative work is born less from a place of hostility, and more from a place of joy. People like to get involved with work they find exciting, and taking the time to comment on it may well be the best part of their working day.

Even if you don’t buy that, I invite you to imagine it regardless, because whatever the finished product looks like, it probably exists on the other side of comments you disagree with, and you will live a happier life if you can navigate that journey with grace. You do not need to apologise for having strong opinions, but neither do you need to be a dick. Likewise, it is possible to be agreeable without literally agreeing.

And so, if it is within you to be an easy person to deal with, then be it.