HARD-EARNED “WISDOM”

Don’t make my mistakes. Make whole brand-new ones of your very own! But how do you do that? I’m glad you asked Random Internet Person Who Might Be A Bot! Why, I teach you how to NOT be me!

As a writer you will mess up. We all do. We all will. No matter how long we’ve been at it we will all inevitably screw the pooch, which is an idiom I still have trouble with. Wouldn’t it be great if somebody could make those mistakes for you?

Critiquing 101: How To Give And Receive Feedback Without Being An Asshole - 3 Hours via Zoom

You know that guy in your writing class who just hates everything unless it’s FRAUGHT WITH MEANING? Or that woman whose work you don’t like but you can see she’s talented and you don’t want to discourage her? How about that teacher who looks at you with deadened eyes filled with regrets and broken dreams, who read way too much Henry Miller in high school and wishes he hadn’t missed out on all those golden years of getting lice in Parisian whorehouses and he says, “You suck, don’t be a writer” and then you scream and pick up a chair and throw it out the window in pure rage?

Yeah, don’t be any those people.

One thing a lot of new (and, hell, old) writers don’t get much instruction on is in how to give or receive feedback. What do you do when you read a friend’s manuscript and you don’t like it? You don’t like it A LOT. How do you take the notes someone whose opinion you respect doesn’t match your own thinking? How do you deal with someone reading your book and saying, “Meh. I didn’t really like it. I don’t know why, though.”?

Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about. How to give constructive feedback. How to receive it. How to ask for it. What to ask for. How to turn useless feedback into something you can work with and on and on.