electric mist

the anatomy of getting feedback

There's this awful truth about writing that writers have to face, which is that at some point, they really do have to turn over what they've written for someone else to read it. Writers want to get feedback, of course, to learn exactly how the piece is being received so that they know whether or not it is working. The only problem is that the writer will probably hear the truth. They do not really want to hear the truth. Or, rather, they want to hear it, but they want it to be, "This is absolute perfection! Don't change a word! Why aren't you rich and famous yet?" Sadly, this is not the common reaction.

Have you ever seen people walking around kinda twitchy, their heads cocked a little sideways when they look at you as if they're expecting you to clout them at any moment, and they're mumbling inchoherently? Don't be worried, they're just writers waiting for feedback. One time when I gave a script to a friend of mine, I dropped it off at her apartment, holding it out and flinching simultaneously (this after she INSISTED that she get to read it because she swore she really really loved my writing), and I drove ALL THE WAY HOME (absolute torture) and I paced by the phone, and paced and paced and paced, and when I could not stand it any longer, I called her and left a message:

"Hi, it's me. I'm just wondering if you really hated it and just didn't want to tell me. Because I can take it. Really. I swear. You can be honest. So. I'm over here. Sort of waiting. No pressure though. I know you have important things in your life. Like work. But really, no pressure. If this message sounds kinda funny, it's because my head's in the oven. But really, no pressure."

To which she called back and left a message:

"IT'S BEEN FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES SINCE YOU LEFT. TAKE A VALIUM, TAKE TEN, TAKE A NAP, BUT QUIT WORRYING, IT'LL BE OKAY."

Like ten valiums would work.

Sometimes, getting feedback is a wonderful vindication of a writer's brilliance, and the notes they get are teeny little feedback sorts of things, and being writers (who have been Godlike in creating and peopling a world), they are magnanimous in their reception of such notes. Ever gracious, actually. Bowing to the wisdom of the reader. (Ahem. They also like sarcasm.)

I recently sent some of the book to a good friend of mine for feedback, and she really liked most of it (a phrase that sounds good, except it really isn't because there's always the WHAT THE HELL DIDN'T YOU LOVE ABOUT IT aspect, not that I shouted or anything.) (There may have been high-pitched squeaking, but I'm not sure.) So anyway, there was this one teeny little note which sort of annoyed me. Just a little. (360 degree head spinning is so too normal, so there.)

Needless to say, I objected to the note. I was nice about it. I am always nice and calm about it. (My friend is due to be released from the hospital soon. They say she will regain full hearing and speech in a few weeks. Isn't that great?) And since I knew that my friend was clearly, obviously, totally WRONG and had no BRAIN CELLS that were functioning properly, it was obvious that I could easily ignore those notes as being COMPLETELY IDIOTIC. Obviously, there are people out there who simply ought to recuse themselves from giving notes.

Now, there used to be times when all I would listen to were the negative notes and I would pretzel myself six ways from Sunday to try to address those notes even if I disagreed with them, and for the longest time, I didn't understand why. Subconsciously, I think it's easier to believe the people who say the writing sucks than to believe the ones who say it's good because most writers bounce between despair and despair (no, that isn't a typo) over how well they're doing, and the negative feedback just validates the despair, so it must be right. A produced screenwriter friend of mine was lamenting the same phenomenon once (and I would have assumed his ego was quite healthy since he had way more success and vindication), but notes had knocked him for a loop at that time. He said he thought it was the little kid in us always trying to gain approval, that the creativity in us is like that little kid, wanting so much to please, and of course, the ones it's already pleased aren't the target -- it's going to focus on the ones it needs to please next, like the child always trying to appease the angry parent and taking for granted the one who lavishes love.

It took a long time to learn that some people really are bad at critiquing, because they give notes based on what they would have done with the premise, or things / themes that they see that are more important to them personally than the ones the author explored or simply because their ego won't allow them to see that the other story works. There have been times when I've gotten critiques like that which were devastating, and it took a long time and other friends' perspectives and feedback to deal with it, but on the whole, it's made me a much better writer and much more able to receive feedback and know how to use it as a diagnostic tool. (An aside -- one of the best pieces of advice came from a young screenwriter on a panel at the Austin Film Festival one year, and ended up being repeated by several of the other more established pros, because they liked his description so much. He said that most writers use notes as a prescriptive tool, i.e., this thing is wrong and therefore change it, instead of a diagnostic tool to say, "Something isn't working and this is a symptom, now let me dig around and find the hidden cause." Most often, by the time a reader has recognized there is a problem, they've already passed up the source of the problem. Similarly, by the time an older person goes to the doctor complaining of really swollen ankles, assuming it's a simple water-retention problem, it could be a symptom of a hidden problem somewhere else, such as congestive heart failure.)

All of that to say, when I got those tiny tweaks from my now-recovering friend, I wanted to assign them to the category of the clueless, to something vindictive or wrongheaded or just plain dumb. However, my friend is none of those things (which I knew but was really hard to admit in the moment) and she's never ever been any of those things, and has always been encouraging and kind and helpful and DAMNIT, THAT SUCKS, because when someone is like that, you really can't just say, "SORRY, YOU'RE AN IDIOT, I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU ANYMORE, LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Which is just really fucking annoying, you know? So I did the mature thing. I stewed and steamed and stomped around all weekend that weekend, bitching and moaning and being angry. I may have kicked things. It was not pretty.

The problem was, I couldn't ignore it. I couldn't let it go. EVEN THOUGH she had been gracious (um, several times) and said, "If this is how you want to approach this piece, I'll completely support you in that and read it accordingly." I mean, THE NERVE. How in the hell are you supposed to deal with that, I ask you? All of that niceness is just WRONG and INAPPROPRIATE because it makes it so much harder to take out a hit, er, ignore the note. Especially when you're really really angry and you can't figure out WHY because you've been perfectly capable of ignoring perfectly nice people prior to this.

As painful as it was to start contemplating, it occurred to me that maybe, just possibly, there was a .000001% chance that the problem was within me. I know, I know, no fainting, but I am not perfect. It's a really scary thought, one that will probably ruin your life for MONTHS, and I know it's sort of hard to believe, like there may be aliens right here among us, but seriously, I had to face the remote potential that I was my own problem.

It took a while, but I finally realized what my particular problem was at this point; my friend disliked a certain technique I used and though she did like some other things, the things she liked came more from the script I'm adapting... the fiction technique she disliked was one I realized I had always used in my fiction writing (as opposed to screenwriting) and I had defaulted to that technique out of comfort and familiarity, and not, (and I really really hate to admit this) because it served the story. So what my subconscious was hearing when she said she didn't think that technique was working was that I SUCKED AS A FICTION WRITER AND MY COMPUTER SHOULD BURN IN HELL AND MY HANDS SHOULD BE BOUND FOR LIFE. Not that I was touchy about it or anything.

And, once I figured it out, the damnedest thing started happening... the emotional attachment I felt for that technique slinked away. (It may have whined and pouted in the corner for a little while, but we're not telling.) Without the emotional attachment, I looked at the other parts of the book that I had already said I felt much more confident about, felt like they worked much better and damnit if I hadn't written all of that the way she was suggesting already, having dropped my other technique and forgotten about it completely. There may have been more stomping and frustrated gnashing of teeth, because the very very VERY last thing any writer wants to do is admit when someone else's note that we knew to be TOTALLY STUPID was, after all, um, not.

Still not willing to totally admit I might have possibly been wrong, I decided to tweak the first chapter without the tainted technique and see if it worked better. I did not want it to, because that would mean I'd have to admit someone else was RIGHT and by default that meant I was NOT right, which would have caused very bad things to happen. (Hurricanes, anyone? You think it a coincidence that it came so much nearer to Louisiana than originally predicted. Ha.)

So. Tried it. It worked.

I really hate it when that happens.

(Um, thanks Pooks. Hope the ears heal quickly.)

Posted by toni at September 22, 2004 10:19 AM