Bells

There should be bells. Bells ringing from every church tower. Ancient air raid sirens dusted off and set to wailing from every courthouse. In the smallest towns, the pastors, awakened by the distant cacophony, should hurry in their robes and slippers to start the bells ringing. People should run from house to house, pounding on doors, their hoarse cries echoing. Children should wake from nightmares and refuse to be comforted. Babies should cry for no reason. There should be summer lightning and the sound of hoof beats. There is only silence and flickering screens and a shiver in the dark.

Allyson, absolutely not what my feedback was indicating at all. I'm sorry if it came across that way. The heart of the piece is excellent. Like everything I've ever written, it just might need some tweaking.

I said this in my email to you, but I think it's important to state here too: your personality crackles out of this piece and makes the reader want to know you, not just Tim.

You may be too close to it right now. Maybe take a day or two and get some breathing room, and come back to it fresh. I find that that makes it easier to see what's great about a piece and what could be done to make it better.

Ginger, you raised the hair on the back of my neck. Nice.

Nah. Everyone was confused by something different, or wanted more than I was willing to spell.

If I clarified all of it to make it crystal, I'd lose my voice in it, completely. It'd be stereo instructions. The problem is, I don't do tender so good.

This one goes in a drawer, and I'll revisit it later.

What Kristin Said.

Damn. Allyson, my only problem with the muffling was feeling it needed a bit more clarity in two places. I thought it was golden, and said so; and BTW, I thought the tenderness was implicit, and definitely didn't spelling out.

Literally a contrast question, easily dealt with. I think there's a good deal of respect for the man's privacy in that piece, and so there should be.

But take a breath, give it a couple of days, and look at it again. Then discard ANY of the feedback that doesn't mesh with your gut feeling about it.

Beta feedback is supposed to be useful, not demolishing. And I always get contradictory feedback, because it's filtering through so many different kinds of perception.

Use the stuff that fits with your own intuition - you wrote it, damn it. Discard the rest.

We are not all right. Sometimes, NONE of us can be right.

Deep breath, sleep on it, reread. Then go with your gut.

I don't generally pull punches when it comes to writing feedback if I give a hard edit, which is why I'd asked last night what type of feedback you were looking for. I'm glad that it wasn't just me that caused you to decide to give it some room.

I'm also glad that you're putting it in a drawer for future revisiting and not just tossing it, because I think you did tender just fine, and I seriously doubt you could ever lose your voice--your style is so distinctive.

EDIT: Also, what Deb said.

(I'm shifting topics here; not talking about Allyson's essay or about that particular beta experience anymore. Just to be clear.)

Sharing writing is so hard. I almost lost a good friend over it at one point. Ironically, it was not because of my beta tendencies but because she had harshed something near and dear to my heart when it was in its early stages. I was looking for pats on my back because it was early, and she gave me a hard edit that tore it to shreds.

Every single comment she made was right, but I just wasn't ready for it yet, and it killed my desire to continue working on it.

We had many long talks about the nature of writing feedback after that, and now we have an almost ritualistic exchange before we swap anything: "Pats or Slaps?" "Narrative or Track Changes?" "Am I allowed to change things, or should I do it all in sidebar comments?"

We've never had another problem since, but it didn't come without a price.

Allyson, having taught many many writing classes and managed writing groups, the key to making feedback work is to look for consensus. If three people out of five find something confusing, then you will probably want to clarify it. If one person loves something, another hates it, and a third is confused, then you can leave it as is. Don't try to address each comment--it'll only make you insane. You want a general sense of how a thing is understood by readers. Learning how to use feedback (whihc includes knowing what to ignore) because it is part of the writing process that is really tough to learn and took me a long LONG time (and I wrote plays, where feedback sessions usually take the form of rather excruciating public discussions where one is sitting there as people talk about how much you suck), but it's really useful.

Use the stuff that fits with your own intuition - you wrote it, damn it. Discard the rest.

This advice, it is excellent.

I was trying to incorporate everyone's feedback, and instead of saying, "I love this sentence. I want to have unsafe sex with this sentence." I made changes. Still think it needs a few weeks in a drawer.

I was trying to incorporate everyone's feedback, and instead of saying, "I love this sentence. I want to have unsafe sex with this sentence." I made changes. Still think it needs a few weeks in a drawer.

Yes, this.

Also what Robin said.