thedarkcanuck

 So, I'm currently constructing a course to teach young artists (in this case dancers) to build the habit of creative journaling as a foundation for developing collaborative projects and writing grants and stuff. *handwave* That's not relevant except as the impetus for this musing about feedback.

I want to teach them a little bit about how to fruitfully solicit, receive and offer feedback, and that got me thinking about how much I've learned from fandom about this process. Having a good many years and a few hundred fics-worth of experience working with beta readers, I can say that fandom did a fantastic job of preparing me to take and give feedback in my other professional spaces (teaching and learning, pro publishing etc.). The idea of involving beta readers in the creative process was just woven into the fic-writing experience and fandom culture when I dipped my toe into it, and that expectation trained me to hold my deathless prose lightly and to onboard the help and insights of a reader way more graciously than I ever had before. This shift of mindset was due in some ways to the gift-culture ethos of fandom; the delight my community took in working to make cool stuff together helped me to shift my stance from defensive protectiveness to openness. This is something I would like my students to experience in their own work.

So, to that end, I would love to hear what y'all think about soliciting and receiving feedback on your work.

Some things I'm chewing on in that regard:

1. The right feedback at the right time: When I'm asked to beta read for someone, the first question I ask is what kind of beta they are looking for: cheerleading? Line-by-line? Structural? etc. I have found that getting the wrong kind of feedback at the wrong time can be harmful to the process. When I'm struggling with the question of whether this story is even viable, telling me that I have too many adverbs and dangling modifiers is gonna derail me completely. How do you articulate to a beta reader what you need at a given stage of the process?

2. Building trust: Asking for feedback requires a lot of trust, I find, since you're giving someone your baby and asking for help raising it. I used to lean on people I already knew and whose work I admired (sometimes different people for different sorts of stories). What do you do when, for example, you're in a new space or are interacting with someone, either as beta or author, whom you might now know very well? How do you establish trust and boundaries necessary for a good experience?

3. Articulating values and qualities of useful feedback: I have found that building a good beta relationship requires me to "hold my values strongly and my opinions lightly" as a colleague of mine wisely advises. For me, some core values can be captured in the "think" model for feedback:

true, helpful, inspiring, needed and kind.

Other models add to that basic structure: timely, specific, honest and brief.

At the heart of these qualities I find two key requirements for both sides of the relationship: the focus on the work; and, as a corollary, leaving our egos at the door. We have to be both kind and courageous, to simultaneously consider the human being and to ensure that the work itself is at the centre of the relationship. It's tricky.  What values or qualities do you see as central to the beta relationship?

PS. Thanks to all the folks engaging in interesting conversations here. I really appreciate this space.