Thursday, October 2, 2008

Giving and Accepting Criticism

My writer's wordshop group is in the midst of editing our poems and writings to make a booklet for the holidays. We bring our creative offerings to be critiqued or criticized by other writers in our group, but I hate those words as they imply judging. In fact that's probably why I don't like sports because there has to be a winning and a losing team. In my world, we would all be winners just because we participate. So trying to use that philosophy in my writing group is a challenge. 

In reading someone else's poem you could give suggestions kindly and your feelings about their offering. Like...when reading your piece, I felt moved by your experience. I liked this part but perhaps you could use a different word here that would be stronger.  If the writer likes your suggestion, she could incorporate the idea into a revision. 

But just remember that you can't please everyone, you can only (ultimately) please yourself-that was a song popular years ago. Most of us novice writers are all too eager to please and conform to what we think others expectations of us are, but we need to value our own viewpoint and uniqueness. This relates to life also. What do you think? 

4 comments:

  1. I think you're the female counterpart of Merlin.

    I love it when you e-mail me about something I've written. You've done so much to encourage me to write more and to believe that maybe I can.

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  2. Giving critical help without it feeling like criticism is a tricky balance that most good teachers have to master.

    One of my principals and her secretary used to ask me to proof letters and articles for clarity and grammar, and my husband, sister, and friends have also requested my help. I guess I have learned how to make them aware of small problems with grammar or precision without changing their voices or timbre.

    Lin, it sounds as though you've learned that too.

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  3. When I taught high school English, I had my students share their writings in small groups, for feedback. I found that the feedback was quite superficial at first, because the writers feared hurting one another's feelings (and they weren't sure what kind of feedback to give.) I'd often ask for one brave soul to "donate" his writing to be projected onto the white board, and we'd have a whole-class writing workshop. That was extremely helpful in getting the kids to offer suggestions with kindness, and also to dig more deeply for suggestions.

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  4. I find that I have to be REALLY careful about offering suggestions to an adult daughter as it could be taken as being critical..

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