How and When to Get Writing Feedback

AMONG THE MANY ROLES I enjoy in this writing life, there is one I only recently began to understand. Actually, I never knew I had this role until on a call with a writer. She was looking for writing feedback and we were discussing her book. Specifically, we were discussing the structure and content of a wonderful idea she has for a book. And while I may or may not have used the word “wonderful” in my comments, I do know I spoke extensively on why and how this book will work, to which she replied, “You are a super validator!”

Wow, I thought. I am an action figure. And that sat in my over-wired, seriously caffeine-assisted brain for a nano-second until I blurted out that clearly what was really needed is a shield and a costume.

“After all,” I chugged on, “if I’m already an action figure, why not shoot for superhero?”

Hubris. I know. Absolutely. But with all those comic book movies out there, who can blame a woman for wanting a shield of her own?

So, I got one. And it got me thinking. Writers have an enormous need to validate their work. We need to know if our work is good. We need to know if it’s working as a piece of memoir. We need to know if that writing interests anyone else. And yet what we do is done all alone in a room – in my case, in total silence – sometimes as much as ten hours a day, talking to no one but the dog. And he does not read as well as some. What to do?

Who to Ask to Read Your Work

Some writers want to read every single line they write, as they write it, to someone else. This is never a good idea, unless, of course, you have a dog. Then read as you type all you want. But let’s all agree not to do this with other humans. No partner, spouse or newly-minted lover wants to be accosted every day, at the end of their own work day, with the great need of yours to be validated. With that as an agreed-upon baseline, let’s walk through how and when to get help for your writing.

Growing up, I had two parents who were writers. My father, a sportswriter of some renown, was a great producer of copy. Oh, he agonized — between keystrokes, running his hands through his thinning hair — but he successfully wrote and published, on deadline, all the time.

My mother, on the other hand, another journalist, somehow became a non-writing writer after the marriage and leaving her newspaper job. When I knew her, she merely talked about her ideas. And even as a little kid I felt terribly sorry for her on this one. There was the idea she had called “In a Plain Brown Bag, Please,” which she talked about a lot when we were kids. Together, she and Jerry, the owner of the local liquor store, would tell the tales of the various customers who patronized his shop. Every time my mother visited him on Northern Boulevard in Queens, she came home with a bag and a tale.

There was the idea she had after we returned from a particular provocative trip to Mexico in which we stayed next to an orphanage. She wanted to go back and delve into those small lives and where they might be lived.

Her family heard her roll out these ideas one after another for a good long while, loved them and listened rapturously. But she never wrote them down. And maybe it’s there – in our loving them – that the first lesson is had.

What is Good Writing Feedback?

Telling your tale to others can validate it. If those listening laugh or cry, sigh or hold their hands to their chests, the teller feels that emotional response and knows the copy is working. But those listener responses also steal the story’s wind if they are not immediately followed by the advice to transfer that energy to the page. This means that writing feedback people should not merely be validators. Instead, they must be Super Validators. At the very least, after hearing a tale and reacting positively, their next response should be to tell you to go write it down. If not, you’ve got the wrong audience. Now, if you get no laughing, crying, sighing or chest heaving from your intended folks, don’t give up. They might just be hungry, or doing their shopping in their heads instead of listening to your work, or perhaps they are not up to the task in any number of other ways. Do not give up. Instead, get another test market.

My mother had a great first-response team: Eager children, both of whom grew up to be writers, and a husband who was deftly supportive of her work. And yet she did not write. Perhaps living with a man who produced boxes and boxes of newspaper clips was daunting. My parents are both dead now. We’ll never know. But I’ve got the yards of his clip boxes and only the memory of her book ideas. I always wish she had gotten better writing feedback.

How to Get Good Writing Feedback

My father never asked for our approval. We read his stuff in the paper when it was printed; we heard him on public radio; the morning after, we saw the fancy, laminated transcriptions of clever speeches he gave honoring the sportswriters of his generation at big dinners at swell Manhattan hotels. He just wrote and published and after he did, he showed it to us. And while I remember being dazzled while reading his stuff  – the man was an alchemist on the page – I am now so damn grateful for the lesson. And if you missed it, it’s this: Write.

I recently spent an hour on the phone with another writer. This one was mapping out a book from scratch. I love doing that. She wanted to walk me through her algorithm, argument and plot line, and then she wanted to tell me what scenes she had chosen to populate that timeline of learning what she knows now after what she has been through. That, after all, is the very definition of memoir, at least according to me. And with that common language and those commonly-respected writing tools, we had a breezy, painless conversation in which I validated for her that her book idea is stellar. I literally cannot wait to read it. What joy for us both.

Validate Early

What’s the lesson here? Validate early, but also to validate with someone whose skills are in place to walk you through the skeleton of your book, as well as through that flesh and skin you intend to attach to animate the tale.

I am growing ever-more concerned about the term “book coach,” and the places I see it online. My advice is to shop with care. If someone has not successfully published a mass-market book and has an extensive number of other published pieces, I’m not interested in their feedback on how to publish my own work. And I see the flaw in that logic. After all, my own four great NYC publishing editors for my own four mass-market books have not published a book between them, though they had flawless experience in publishing others. But note that last phrase. Between them they have probably published a thousand books, many of them bestsellers.

So make your own guidelines. But stick to them. Some of what I see advertised online makes me ever more afraid for the success of young writers. Use care. Apply healthy skepticism. If someone sounds too good to be true and uses language on their website that sounds over-the-top – You are a Writer Now! Publish Your Work in Weeks! – look again. And remember my mother. She never published, having gotten feedback from only those people who had great heart for her, but no skills to help her get published. You do not need only great heart. You need a Super Validator. Not even my father could inspire her either with his love or by his example to get her work on the page.

How to Validate Your Writing

To truly validate your writing you need more than someone who tells you “Great! Keep going!” Your family can do that, and little else, after all. Instead, what you need is someone who is invested in your success.

How do I define that? Like this: As a person who has the skills to bridge the gap between what you know and what you need to know to make the piece of writing work.

Before you engage anyone for the job as your memoir coach or memoir editor, make sure they have real credentials. Ask for those credentials. Then discuss these with that person. Ask them questions about how this writing feedback will shape you. What did he or she learn along the way to publishing that book of theirs? How many of their clients have gotten where you want to get – to publication, perhaps – and where were they published? Ask the person to convey to you how they identify the skills you need and what the costs will be to you to learn them. How long can you expect this relationship to last? And what should your expectations be at the end?

As to those, anyone who guarantees you will get published is lying to you. If, however, they suggest you go research your options by starting with the Call for Submissions at Poets & Writers Magazine, that’s someone who knows a good source. Similarly, they should suggest the ongoing and regularly-updated list of agents that Poets & Writers also maintains. If, instead, the resources you are directed to are all sites that charge to read your stuff, I suggest that you beware.

After that, apply a keen ear to the criticism you receive. Every person employed to make your writing better should do just that. Are they recommending good books to read? Are they supplying intelligent, accurate comments in the margins that say far more than “Great!” and the dreaded “Neat!” Again, it’s purely a personal rule, but my rule of thumb is that anyone who uses the word “Neat!” about my stuff is not the editor for me.

Make sure you tell the person exactly what you want. Do you seek a content edit? Do you expect them to rearrange and fix your book for you? Are you seeking a rewrite of your work or a ghostwriter for your material? Do you want copyedits and suggestions for places to publish? These are wildly different assignments requiring wildly different skills. Do not be up-sold our over-sold. Ask for what you want, be clear and get what you need.

Don’t Be a Talking Journalist

In the journalism world, we call those people who just talk, but don’t produce, “talking journalists,” and we never use this phrase with any envy or compassion. Those people should be typing when, instead, they are getting the high they get repeatedly telling the same stories at dinner parties. What’s the problem here? They have the order wrong. Write the tale, publish that tale and then you can dine out on it forever, if you so choose. But don’t just tell it and call yourself a writer. It’s like me removing a splinter from my finger and calling myself a surgeon. I grew up with both models of writers – regularly published and non-published – and while I adored both of my parents, I’ll choose my dad’s system every, single time.

Having grown up in New York journalism and publishing, many of my parents’ friends were writers, some more successful than others. These days, most of my friends are writers. We swap tales all the time about what we learn and where we learned it. And then there is my memoir coaching and memoir editing work in which I daily give writing feedback to students and clients. So, I hear a lot of language on this topic. Writing feedback seems to be one of the major themes running through my life, and sometimes someone will ask me for a favorite nugget. I have one. It came from the great contemporary novelist, Pete Dexter, who I had the good fortune to introduce at The New York State Writers Institute when he was visiting during a tour for his stellar novel, Spooner. Asking him about some tepid reviews he’d gotten over the years to one or two of his many books, he grinned, replying, “There’s a lot worse things a man can do than write a few bad books.”

If I was into ink of the tattoo kind, that would be my ink. Use it for yours, if you want. For my part, maybe I’ll needlepoint it onto something or ice it onto a cake.

So write. And when you are ready to show it someone, remember that asking for help should always result in getting the help you seek.

Want more help? Come see me in any one of my online classes.

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

Memoirama 2. Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book.

How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world.

And keep in mind that I am now taking names for the January-June 2020  Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month. Limited to seven writers. Get a first draft of your memoir finished in six months.