We Want Feedback

We can live and write for days. weeks, and months without feedback

             Even so, one of the top values of a writing group is the variety of great feedback it often provides.

 

                The developing, growing, maturing writer learns to value the feedback of one's peers. Such feedback is precious and very often rare. Your writing group will be made up of fellow writers. In such a group you can have several knowledgeable readers telling you about the feelings and thoughts your writing stirred in them. They can tell you what they felt as they read a specific piece of your work. You can get regular feedback of several kinds from the members of your group.

 

                I hope to post more about feedback and other benefits of a writing group in future posts. This particular post is a short wide-ranging introduction to the subject.

 

                A writing group is usually about writing better without the use of a teacher. However, a writing group may attract more than one teacher, including teachers of writing. Don't be surprised if that happens, teachers are often learners who want to learn more about their subject.

 

                They might, however, need to be reminded that they are not there to teach. They are there as a learning reader and writer. They are there to be good readers ready to provide their honest reactions to that which they read. Each of your group members focus on telling you how she experiences the work you submit. Just as you will tell her how you experience your careful reading of her work.

 

Quickly moving forward, I here add actions you may consider taking before you choose a writing group or before making one of your own.You can:

~ Start writing and keep writing.

~ Find a writing group in action close to you and check it our.

~ Sit in a a couple of meetings to see how it may benefit or suit you.

~ Check  out online posts here and elsewhere about writing and writing groups.

~ Talk with a writing friend about forming a group.

~ Consider that most better writers have been good readers.

Once you better know your options and better know the kind of group you want, you might consider thoughts you would like potential members of your group to consider. 

Here are some sample points of the sort:

~ Find a time for your meeting and stick to it. Its fair to have have two writing groups each meeting at a different time.

~ Help one another to become better listeners and better readers as well as better writers.

~ Help each other to better know the kinds of feedback most needed and most wanted.

~ Decide on whether you want to handout your work to be read at home, to read your work aloud at meetings, or both, or what. 

~ When you read a piece in group, read it twice. You will find that two readings are much better than one.

~ Show up at meetings.

I enjoy and appreciate your comments about specific parts of the content of my posts. There is, I hope, a "comment" window just below. It may sometimes be marked with the words "no comments!"

 

                                                                                                                                RCS

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a Writing Group

 Are you serious about having a group?

                Tell me about it. I am interested; I may even be able to offer some help, or to try to do so. And remember, you do not have to have one. Many successful writers have never had the experience of a group. Most have received some feedback and many have benefited from that feedback.

The following few paragraphs may help you in your efforts to recruit group members and even help to keep a a group to keep going:

                Talk feedback. An important, and appreciated, function of your group can be providing feedback to one another. There are effective ways of doing so. I will try to touch on a couple of those ways here.

                Other purposes for your group can include: inspiring you to write, improving the effectiveness of your words, and help you to feel satisfaction in your development. On this blog are an increasing number of posts calculated to improve your chances of pleasing a reader. These posts can help you to continue writing well with or without a group. You are welcome to explore them all.

Back to group feedback:

                Selections of members' writing may be read in group, yours too. This can be an important step toward providing useful feedback to a writer. Useful feedback begins with careful reading of her work. Often the entire group will participate in providing feedback on a given selection. I like to hear the selection read aloud to the whole group a couple of times. Group members will volunteer their comments and all are encouraged to do so. Group members will often quickly learn to make their feedback more honest and more helpful with little need for encouragement. Still, it is OK to encourage them.

                Writers may find that more reading may move them to better writing. 

A writer will appreciate a careful reading of her work. Should the writer be male he is likely to appreciate a careful reading of his work.

Reading:

              As a reader don't be nervous in telling how a given selection affected you. Your job can be well done just by honestly saying something about what happened to you as you read her selection. With this you will be making a great beginning and also doing that which will continue to be helpful over time.

                Some preparation may be called for. At times a piece may be read to you a couple of times in group. At other times you may take a written copy home to read carefully more than once. Everyone ought to be prepared to give feedback. Everyone will begin to learn a bit about providing feedback useful to the writer. The practice of honesty is a good practice to follow. Honesty can be kind and even loving as well as cutting and brutal. When you are not sure what kind of honesty is best at the time, it is usually best to choose kind and considerate.  

                Your good reading habits may get even better as you read the works of your fellow writers. You may come to pay better attention to your own feelings during your reading and even remember their occasion. Better reading often results in improved writing.

More about feedback:

                Upon hearing or reading a writers work, be ready to tell her how her words led you to react or feel. Tell her what happened to you as you read her words. You can also tell her what you understood or failed to understand from her writing. If the piece bored you, tell her so. Be honest. If you had a cold and had not slept well before your reading, let her know that it may have affected your reaction to her work.

                Do your best to complete your assigned reading. You may even suggest that it might be best for you to complete a reading during group time or to listen to a reading during group time. It's your group too. It is still unfair not to read. It is best to aim to read near your best. Read the work a second time and note the difference. Be a good reader to help others to write better and to give yourself a chance to write better. Be a better than average reader even when it feels somewhat burdensome to do so. You can tell the writer that it was burdensome. You can also tell him what you thought he was getting at and what seemed to be his main points. Your honesty can be very helpful.

                You can often help a fellow writer by telling him, or her, when and at what point, in your reading you felt perplexed, annoyed, or disappointed, enlightened, pleased and satisfied. Say what made you laugh or smile. Say when you got it and felt pleased. Say when the work felt rewarding.

                You now know some of the responsibility of a reader at feedback time.

                At that same time the writer's job is to hear the feedback, to be quiet and listen. Then to consider how to use the information to help her, or him, to write to better effect or to continue to practice his or her wonderful ability.

                Much of your ability to write well may develop with practice and experience at some distance from both class and group. Still classes have helped many, and group is helping may more, to develop their talent and ability.

                Thank you for reading.

                Keep writing.

                                                                                                 rcs

              

I Need Feedback

I Need Your Feedback      

                I need you to tell me what you would like me to write and even how you would like me to write it. When you like that which I have written I would like you to tell me why you liked it so that I can try to produce more of that which you enjoy, find useful, or like me to write more of. I would like to try to tailor my posts and essays more to your needs, wants, and likes. What you tell me in the "comments" can be of great help.

                With your help this web site can become more usefully interactive.

               There are over a dozen associated sites which you can reach from here, some with a single click.

                You might find time to check out a couple of those sites and tell me when there is one that maybe I could make more useful or enjoyable for you.

                Thank you for your visit. Thank you for reading!

                                                                                Richard 

                

"Spellcheck" and "comments"

                 The spellcheck and comments apps have been taken from this blog as they have been taken for my Governance With RCS blogs and other blogs of mine! My Esoteric to Exoteric has lost its spellcheck app but still has its "comments" app.

                You may use the comments app at Esoteric to Exoteric to make comments intended for any of the associated blogs from which the "comments" app has been removed. 

                Be sure begin your comment with a notice nameing the the blog and post for which the comment is intended and refers to.

                I have lost the spellcheck from a dozen blogs and have found no way to get them back. Now I have already lost about that many Comments apps!! I could really use some help! If you know of a way to finding help please tell me about. "Settings" on my dashboard no longer works to reset spellcheck. I have found no help at all from Blogspot "help" or "send feedback!"

                                                                                                    Richard

It's Called Writer's Block

Write RCS: We get stuck. I get stuck. Writers get stuck. Writers get unstuck.

            Writers get unstuck!  We can get unstuck with better feedback. An excellent source of good feedback is a writing group. Your own writing group like the ones I've written of in other posts, is more helpful than most casual conversations and usually less threatening. A search for "writing" and "groups" and "writing groups" may come up with something interesting.

If you have writers block right now, try :

• thinking about the meaning, not the words, of what you are about to write helps. Think about your meaning, then find the best words.
• taking some time to consider what is going on with you
• just resting a bit.
• completing some business.
  

Doing the following has gotten writers unstuck:

~ Look for contrasting or conflicting elements in what you have written or about to write. 

You can interact with those elements when you find them. Just finding an example of one such element and naming it can help.

~ Try just babbling on in you writing. You may find yourself being not so nice or less agreeable than usual. You might even begin talking back to yourself. Try not to shut yourself down too fast. Let each voice say what it has to say in your writing. Let each argument build a bit. Don't stop yet. Let each voice make it's point.

~ I get  frustrated and imagine that you do too. Let their movement, some movement. Again let let each and every voice have it's say before you shut it down. No one is looking. Some writing may occur.

~ Try more meaning before words. Develop the meaning of the words you are using. Clarify those meanings. Fit word to meaning.

~ Keep writing even if you only write why your writing doesn't make sense. Keep writing for 10 or 20 minutes. Then try to get yourself to step back and look at what you have written with some perspective. You may discover that you have written verbless phrases or that nothing you asserts anything. A few verbs and a couple of assertions may improve your writing. 

~ Sit back. Look at your writing and try to see what it adds up to. Going back and forth between immersing yourself in your writing and then sitting back to gain perspective is writing. As Mr. Elbow says, "You are cooking."

~ At times it is good to let yourself get a bit extreme, to be emotional. Let each impulse have its day. Sometimes it seems that one has a cycle to go through before you get down to better writing. Such a time may well be the time to take to extremes for a while. Take it to the limit one more time. Later you can be the ruthless editor with a sharp knife.  

 

            I get stuck less these days. When I do get stuck, I know what I can do to get unstuck pronto.

            Write us a comment below. Bye for now.

                                                                   by R. Carroll Sheehan

 <script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-8585698470126416"

     crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

Writing With or Without Your Group

Write With RCS: We get unstuck and we write

                We get unstuck.  An aid for getting unstuck is feedback. An excellent source of feedback is a writing group. Your own writing group, like ones I've written of in other posts on this blog, is more helpful than most casual conversation and often less of a threat. Taking some time to consider what is going on with you is also a help and so is just some rest. Taking care of some personal business may free up your writing. Often thinking about the meaning, not the words, of what you are about to write helps.

You can also try the following to get your writing to flow:

~ Look for contrasting or conflicting elements in what you have written or are about to write. You can interact with those elements when you find them. Just finding an example of just one such element and naming it can help. 

~ Try just babbling in you writing. You may find yourself being not so nice or less agreeable than usual. You might even begin talking back to yourself. Try not to shut yourself down too fast. Let each voice say what it has to say in your writing. Let each argument build a bit. Don't stop yet. Again, let each voice have it's say.

~ Of course you get frustrated; me too. Let there be some movement. Again, let each and every voice have it's say before you shut it down. No one is looking. Some writing may occur.

~ Try more meaning before words. Develop the meaning of the words you are using. Clarify those meanings. Fit word to meaning. 

~ Keep writing even if you only write why your writing doesn't make sense. Keep writing for 10 or 20 minutes. Then try to get yourself to step back and look at what you have written with some perspective.  You may discover that you have verbless phases, or that nothing you have written asserts anything. A few verbs and a couple of assertions may improve you writing.     

 ~ Sit back. Look at your writing and try to see what it adds up to. Going back and forth between immersing yourself in writing to gain some perspective is writing. As Mr. Elbow says, "You are cooking."

~ At times it helps to let yourself get a bit extreme. Be emotional. Let each impulse have it's day. Sometimes it seems that one has a cycle to go through before you can get down to better writing.  Such a time may well be the time to take to extremes for awhile. Take it to the limit one more time. Later you can be a ruthless editor with a sharp knife.

                By reading, even rereading essays on this blog  you can find some help for you and your writing.

                                                            by Richard Sheehan

 

Feedback for Writers

Write With RCS: Find out more about a writing Group and feedback. We may not need it but, it sure can help. 

                You can see that I have posted often about writing, writers and writing groups when you review the labels list in the column to the right of this post.
                   

             You may have already come to see that I believe that a teacherless writing group is a great way to great writing.

            A main purpose of such groups is the providing of appropriate feedback to writers about how their writing effects readers of their work.
                   

            I intend to write more  about developing and providing useful feedback to writers in the future.
                However, while I'm here I'll try to write something about better reading and more useful feedback.  

                In your writing group you can become a better reader and perceiver. No one is truly able to tell you that your perceptions are right or wrong. However, as a reader in a writing group you can be honest, can practice, and can learn.

            By using your perception, your perception can become more accurate and more useful.

                Your job as a reader of the works of others in your writing group is, to tell the writer what you really see and how you really react to his writing(I could say "her"rather "his," for a writing group may include female writers or may be made up entirely of female writers, but I will not). You as a good reader will know that you can learn to see better and to experience more fully.  

                As you help the writer become a better writer, you become a better reader. As you become more of an expert you may begin to feel that you are always right. I my experience, that is never true. What seems true to me is that as you continue to practice you can become a more agile, flexible, refined reader, and a more honest one.

                Learning to be a better reader is a process of character building. You may find yourself becoming both more sure of yourself and more humble.

                I have a lot to learn about my writing. I can benefit from good feedback. You can offer me some in the "comments' section below. 


                                                        by Richard Sheehan












 

A Writing Group

Write With RCS: One of the top values of a writing group is the variety of great feedback it often provides.

 

            The developing, growing, maturing writer learns to value the feedback of one's peers. Such feedback is precious and very often rare. Your writing group will be made up of fellow writers. In such a group you can have several knowledgeable readers telling you about the feelings and thoughts your writing stirred in them. They can tell you what they felt as they read a specific piece of your work. You can get regular feedback of several kinds from the members of your group.

 

            I hope to post more about feedback and other benefits of a writing group in future posts. This particular post is a short wide-ranging introduction to the subject.

 

            A writing group is usually about writing better without the use of a teacher. However, a writing group may attract more than one teacher, including teachers of writing. Don't be surprised if that happens, teachers are often learners who want to learn more about their subject.

They might, however, need to be reminded that they are not there to teach. They are there as a learning reader and writer. They are there to be good readers ready to provide their honest reactions to that which they read. Each of your group members focus on telling you how she experiences the work you submit. Just as you will tell her how you experience your careful reading of her work.

 

            Quickly moving forward, I here add actions you may consider taking before you choose a writing group or before making one of your own.You can:

~ Start writing and keep writing.

~ Find a writing group in action close to you and check it our.

~ Sit in a a couple of meetings to see how it may benefit or suit you.

~ Check  out online posts here and elsewhere about writing and writing groups.

~ Talk with a writing friend about forming a group.

~ Consider that most better writers have been good readers.

            Once you better know your options and better know the kind of group you want, you might consider thoughts you would like potential members of your group to consider.Here are some sample points of the sort:

~ Find a time for your meeting and stick to it. Its fair to have have two writing groups each meeting at a different time.

~ Help one another to become better listeners and better readers as well as better writers.

~ Help each other to better know the kinds of feedback most needed and most wanted.

~ Decide on whether you want to handout your work to be read at home, to read your work aloud at meetings, or both, or what. 

~ When you read a piece in group, read it twice. You will find that two readings are much better than one.

~ Show up at meetings.

            I enjoy and appreciate your comments about specific parts of the content of my posts. There is, I hope, a "comment" window just below. It may sometimes be marked with the words "no comments!"

 

                                                                    RCS

Writing Feedback Two

Write With RCS: This is a bit more about readers in writing groups. There is also info that can be of interest to other writers.

            Feedback can be the most important activity of your writing group. You can get precious feedback when members of your group read a given piece of your work in preparation for giving you the feedback you are looking for. You may want praise, but you benefit by knowing what your writing does to others.

            If you are now in a writing group you ought to soon have your turn as one of the readers providing valuable feedback. You may be an excellent reader and have read much as a writer learning your craft. However so, you will become a better reader  yet, as you read to provide feedback to your fellow writers.

            Use your reading skills to be a better provider of useful feedback.

Here is a miscellany of suggestions for becoming a reader better able to serve your writers:

~ Be willing to become more aware and more conscious.

~ Be willing to become a better perceiver .

~ Be willing to be even more honest than usual.

~ Note that as you perceive more consciously you perception becomes more accurate.

~ Be more attentive to your feelings as you read.

~ Be ready to tell the writer how you understood his writing.

~ Be ready to tell him how you perceive and experience his words.

~ Be ready to replay your experience of her writing as a kind of movie.

~ Remember that you are not a teacher here.

~ You are a reporter of experience, yours.

~ Remember that you are in a teacher-less writing group.

~ Be ready to give your writer a brief summary of what you think she has written. What does it add up to. 

~ What is its center of gravity? What sticks out. Tell us.

~ If you can, summarize this particular pies of writing in a single sentence. 

~ Choose  a word which most summarizes the piece. Choose a word from his writing. Choose a word not from his writing.

~ Don't plan or think too much about this first summary.

~ Tell the writer what happenings or doings she made stand out most at your first reading.

~ Tell her what you remember from last week's piece.

~ Simply tell the writer everything that happened to you as you carefully read her work. Tell how you felt as you read. Were you surprised? Happy? Tell if or when you began to like it.

~ Advice offering or giving is usually avoided. However, if your interaction with the writer indicates a real desire for advice and you feel you have good advice to offer, an exception may be made.

~ Be aware that this is not a story. Its about how you carry our your part in this section of your group.

~ Your feedback comes directly from your experience of the specific piece.

~ You might tell what specific voices are like at various points.

~ Describe what you think the writer's intentions were with this specific piece. Think of some crazy intention he might have had.

~ You might swallow it whole and give the result.

~ Just tell how you experienced work through imagination and feeling. 

                                                                                    rcs

A Writing Group

Write With RCS: Writing Group Feedback from your group.

 

 

            Giving and receiving feedback may be the top purpose of a writing group. Here I will emphasize the job of receiving feedback. It need not be a job; we could call it the process of receiving feedback, but "job'" is shorter. Your job as a receiver is listening. Not volunteering comments or asking questions. You are the receiver of greater benefits than you may fully grasp just now.

 

            In your group you practice listening. This is not a law but rather a suggestion and what I know of how to benefit from such groups. Listen with great attention to how your words affect others. You do what to have your words to have an effect, right? You may have bee trying for a specific effect. You want to know how this group of fellow writers are responding to that which you have written. You want to know what each felt or thought as they read your work. This process is not deadly; it will help you to grow and develop as a writer.

 

            You are learning to be quiet and listen. So, be quiet. Do not tell those who read your work anything until much later. let them be uncertain of what of what you wanted your work to convey or at whom it was aimed. Let them suffer. Maybe they will notice more and be able to give you a more full and honest response. It is your task to become a better listener, and not to be a teacher or a question asker. Try changing the word "task" in the previous sentence to "pleasure." You want to know how your words in a specific piece of your writing led them to feel or think.

 

            Neither giving nor receiving feedback is easy. In both it is possible to come to feel, for a time, that you are always right or always wrong. An important activity of the imparter of reaction is is to become as honest as possible. A bit of a job. The task of you the listener/writer, is to attentive and quiet. Telling nothing and saying nothing may not come easily to you, the receiver of this treasure of feedback. But you can remember that you best teacher could probably not have given you the feedback treasure you receive from the members of your writing group. That treasure helps you to be a better and better writer. This group response of fellow writers can better inform you of how the world will receive your writing than can many an excellent teacher.

 

            Some readers of your writing may be good at tricking you into telling them more about the intentions you have for the piece in question than you intended. But you, as its writer, want only to know what your writing did to them, with no ''helpful'' hints. When you tell the readers in your group what you wanted your writing to do to them, you hinder their fresh and honest response.

 

            You, as the writer, want to know how the reader perceives and experiences your words. You want to know what it was what it was like to be him reading your words. Never stop a reader from from giving you her reactions. You very much need her feedback and she is will to give it. Let her.

 

            You can look to members of your writing group to find out what your words caused to happen in their consciousness. The better you get at the uncovering of feelings in your group and how your words effected consciousness, the better you will be at deciding for yourself when your words are most likely to be doing what you want them to. or not.

 

            It may be helpful to remember that members of your group are neither gods nor teachers, telling you how other words will work better if either this or that were changed in thus and such a way. What they can tell you very well is how they experienced a specific work of yours; how they experienced your words there, how they reacted to them.

 

            Your readers job is to provide you with a kind of movie of his mind as he read your work, and it is not your job to tell him how to do so. And it is certainly no one's job to quarrel with another's experience.

You do not need writing group to write well, but one can truly help. When you would be a writer write.

 

            More to come.

                                                                                    RCS

 

Writing Group: First Notes

Write With RCS: One of the top values of a writing group is the variety of great feedback it often provides.

            The developing, growing, maturing writer learns to value the feedback of one's peers. Such feedback is precious and very often rare. Your writing group will be made up of fellow writers. In such a group you can have several knowledgeable readers telling you about the feelings and thoughts your writing stirred in them. They can tell you what they felt as they read a specific piece of your work. You can get regular feedback of several kinds from the members of your group.

             I hope to post more about feedback and other benefits of a writing group in future posts. This particular post is a short wide-ranging introduction to the subject.

            A writing group is usually about writing better without the use of a teacher. However, a writing group may attract more than one teacher, including teachers of writing. Don't be surprised if that happens, teachers are often learners who want to learn more about their subject.

            They might, however, need to be reminded that they are not there to teach. They are there as a learning reader and writer. They are there to be good readers ready to provide their honest reactions to that which they read. Each of your group members focus on telling you how she experiences the work you submit. Just as you will tell her how you experience your careful reading of her work.

             Quickly moving forward, I here additional actions you may consider taking before you choose a writing group or before making one of your own.

You can:

~ Start writing and keep writing.

~ Find a writing group in action close to you and check it our.

~ Sit in a a couple of meetings to see how it may benefit or suit you.

~ Check  out online posts here and elsewhere about writing and writing groups.

~ Talk with a writing friend about forming a group.

~ Consider that most better writers have been good readers.

Once you better know your options and better know the kind of group you want, you might consider thoughts you would like potential members of your group to consider. Here are some sample points of the sort:

~ Find a time for your meeting and stick to it. Its fair to have have two writing groups each meeting at a different time.

~ Help one another to become better listeners and better readers as well as better writers.

~ Help each other to better know the kinds of feedback most needed and most wanted.

~ Decide on whether you want to handout your work to be read at home, to read your work aloud at meetings, or both, or what. 

~ When you read a piece in group, read it twice. You will find that two readings are much better than one.

~ Show up at meetings.

            I enjoy and appreciate your comments about specific parts of the content of my posts. There is, I hope, a "comment" window just below. It may sometimes be marked with the words "no comments!"

                                                                rcs