How to Know It's Time To Get Feedback On Your Writing
I was on the phone with a friend recently. He had written an essay about something important to him. He was passionate about the topic, and he got completely in the flow while writing. Writing this essay was a great experience for him. It lit him up and made him feel excited about life.
But then he shared it with a handful of friends. He got feedback about how he could make his piece even better, and after that, the shame spiral kicked in. He was embarrassed. He couldn't believe he had shared something so horrible with other people.
Instead of continuing to work on his writing, the file is now stored on his computer in draft form, collecting spider webs.
When I talked to him about this, it hit me just how common this experience is. I've done it a million times. I've written webpages, blog posts, and books. While my pieces were still very much in the first draft phase, I shared them with friends, who were amazing and helpful and gave me great feedback on how to improve my writing.
And that's just when the shame spiral would hit. "I'm a terrible writer." "I'm so embarrassed I shared this with anyone else."
My stomach would get queasy, and instead of working on my piece, I would numb out on Netflix.
I've learned a few things over the years to help with this particular type of experience. Over the next couple weeks, I'm going to share some tips, some philosophies about creativity, and some thoughts on writing to help you if you've ever experienced this same thing.
My mission is to help you start writing and then keep on writing, so you can share your wildly authentic story with the world. The experience of getting feedback from friends is definitely a tricky one on the creative journey, but I promise it doesn't have to be as painful as it is right now.
So, in part 1, here are my first thoughts on what to do when you get feedback about how to improve your writing.
When you express yourself creatively, and you write something that is real and important to you, something that expresses part of who you really are, it is an incredibly vulnerable process.
Especially if you're someone like me, who grew up learning that we were weird, strange, too loud, talked too much, and should just be quiet and wear normal clothes already.
When I grew up I learned that how I wanted to authentically express myself, with what I wore, with what I wanted to say, and with the stories I wanted to write, was totally socially unacceptable.
Those lessons stick with you. Even when you're an adult, like me, who has a supportive community of wonderful friends who only wish the best for her. Even now, expressing my True Self brings up old beliefs and old wounds about what a terrible, no-good, annoying person I am.
When you have these types of issues going on, sharing your writing isn't always an easy-breezy situation. It can feel like you just opened up your old scars for whoever wants to randomly stomp on your wound and pour lemon juice into it, too. It's a very sensitive situation.
This fact alone can stop people from writing, but I am here to say that writing and sharing your writing can be an incredible healing journey for these wounds. When you free your voice and put yourself out there, it can break through the limiting beliefs and help you write more, say more, and express yourself more authentically in every way in your life.
The trick I want to share with you today is that there are two things that can help make your sensitive situation a lot easier.
One is undertaking your process of getting feedback as a healing journey. Know that it's going to be a thing for you. Know that it's going to bring up your stuff, and also know that you can move through it.
The other is to know when it's the right time to share. What I do is I like to give myself four drafts of a writing project before I share it with anyone else. I work on it. I write it. I have a love affair with my creativity, and I bring it to where I know what I'm presenting is good, even if it can be tweaked.
After I've worked on something enough, and after I've changed it enough for myself, it honestly doesn't feel as sensitive to share. I'm kind of done with it. I'm done re-reading it. I'm bored of tweaking it. I'm ready for someone else to have a look and give their opinion.
The thing with a first draft is that they can always be changed. There is always low hanging fruit to switch up. So, it works for me to wait until I'm less attached to a piece and then share it with others.
The trick with this is to not get too perfectionist about it. You don't need to share a perfect piece with other people, just a piece you kind of feel finished with.
Changing your work and making it better is a very normal part of the writing process. In fact, writing the first draft is probably 10% of the writing process as a whole. The rest is editing, tweaking, changing, walking, thinking, re-organizing, finding typos, wordsmithing, staring out the window, drinking tea, daydreaming.
Changing your writing IS writing.
The very first mindset to have in place before sending any writing out for feedback is truly understanding that editing your writing doesn't mean you've done anything wrong or bad. Editing literally IS writing. Just like when an artist looks a painting and adds a dab of light green here, a splotch of dark blue there. They step back and look at the painting, seeing where the colors need to be. That is what you do when you change your writing.
You are seeing where something makes sense, where it doesn't, what you really want to say and how to say it. Writing a first draft is the beginning. It gives you something to work with so you can dive deep into the writing process. Having something to edit means only that you're winning at the game. You've given yourself something to write, and that is amazing.