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.

Still think it needs a few weeks in a drawer.

The drawer is a magical place. I've looked over stories I hadn't read in years and just been aghast at what I used to think was good. And then there are times when I've pulled something out and it made me laugh and I was all, "Fuck you all. I'm funny." There are -- I write stories, you write essays, I'm using the word stories -- stories you just know are good, the ones you pick up after not having looked at them for a while, and still love to pieces, no matter what your professors said about seventeen pages being too short to carry that much stylistic flair. "Shopping" is my favorite, I adore it, and you'll get that feeling too, once you step away and clear your head of it and approach it as a slightly informed reader rather than the writer.

I'm rambling. I want to revise the damn death story. And maybe write something new.

I loved it as I read it, with one grammar-y thing. For what that's worth. The drawer time should mellow it to perfection, I think.

That's what I ended up with last night, Robin. I took the one thing everyone commented on, defining what "sparkliness" is, when I say that there was something sparkly about him that stood out and made me all, "say! you're totally going to be my friend 4EVAH!"

Tim moves like he owns whatever space he's in. Makes me want to be in that space, too, like the air is more comfortable within it. That's sparkly.

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.

Yep. Yep yep yep. That is to be avoided. In the end? This is your baby; not to be gross in comparisons, but it came out of you. You get the final say on how to feed it, and when.

I think three of us - Bev, ita, myself - felt a kind of muffling in one or two places. Using the beta feedback, as Robin mentioned, gives you one thing in the piece in which three of your readers got a similar hit, though we might have expressed it differently. If it's my piece (and it isn't - this is purely how I look at beta feedback and lord knows, I am a humongous beta ho, and send my beta readers nummy things to eat, even when they loathe me), I give it a couple of days to process in my head, then compare with the places where the muffling was mentioned, and see if the consensus there jives with your intuition.

But always, always, go with your gut, if there's any conflicts.