As of the writing of this post, Twitter was dying. Who knows what state it will be in by the time I post this particular blog. But the idea is the same. 

The idea of Twitter Writing Advice, Listicle Advice, or short, succinct advice is that Writers™ just want a bunch of check-boxes of writing advice that will guarantee their success. To some extent, that may be true. But the advice you get in 280-characters, a list, or without additional context is basically worthless.

Everyone knows the basic "Show, Don't Tell." Hell, I was taught that as a child in English class about writing having nothing to do with fiction. Where did that advice come from? Well, I've read many interesting suggestions on that ranging from a CIA plot to sway politics via fiction to silent films to Anton Chekhov, a playwright. Quite frankly, none of the sources of these give sources that satisfy my scientist's heart. I have no opinion on the source. My problem lies in how this advice is given. That is, simply and often without anything to actually help a fiction writer grow. Even in the course in which I first heard it didn't really expound upon it usefully. 

When given as advice, "Show, Don't Tell" is useless. Only give or receive this advice if you're in an hour class in which ways in which discussion of "tell" as important and helpful. Only give or receive this advice if you're in an hour or more class in which you discuss what is meant by "show" without it resulting in purple prose or overblown narration. Only give it if you are prepared to really discuss what "show" means and what "telling" is and how they are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually beneficial.

My first gripe in this post is when on a 280-character limited social media someone posts Found 25 instances of "asked" in my MS. Time to get trimming!
A writer might walk away from seeing such a post thinking, "is 'ask' a filler word now? Should I be removing dialogue tags of 'asked' from my prose?" The answer is No. No, it is not and no you should not. Why is this person citing "asked" as something to trim? Who knows? They didn't elaborate. They didn't thread. They just tweeted out a person goal that now reads as Writer Advice.

Or better yet, actual writer advice! There have been amazing disk horses over such things as "do people frown with their mouths or foreheads?" or "nobody sighs as much as writers think they do." Often this advice is a random person giving advice using their own personal pet peeves as though it is helpful and useful - just like that 1* review on feedback I mentioned before.
Personally, I enjoy the pushback on these. But if you miss the pushback, you might think the advice is good.

By definition, micro blogging media such as Twitter or even Mastodon, is meant for short, sweet communication. It does not allow for nuance. I'm not even sure long blogs, such as this, can really get into advice clearly. Because communication is limited. 

You've come acrost one or more of these:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

When I came back to writing groups after about 15 years of not being apart of fiction writing groups, these pieces of advice were being passed around like candy. I implore you to go back to my first piece of advice. Who is Elmore Leonard to give this advice? He's a writer who had books and short stories published for 30 years before he gained widespread notoriety - in 1985. He was supposedly "one of few genre writers taken seriously by lit circles." LOL, okay. Please let me know if I'm wrong, but based on photographs and when he was writing, he seems like a cis-het-NT-able-bodied-white man. He basically constrained huge amounts of writing to his world view and preferences.

Oh. This seems like prescriptive writing advice in a list based upon one writer's personal pet peeves presented as hard and fast rules. Please see above.

I'll be honest, I'd never heard the thing about only using "said" as a dialgue tag until 2020. So it wasn't even accepted advice until after this guy died. But I get told "Publishing says..." Did Publishing say? Or have a lot of people in Publishing read this prescriptivist advice, felt the need to present some basis in fact or figures, and have made up that "Readers don't see 'said.'" Can I get a price check on that? Like, how was that determined?

Find a writers group you can trust who will discuss the advice given, so that there is nuance and context. In the group, go through craft books together and discuss the advice with critical eyes and minds. Do not fall prey to pithy Writer Advice without understanding where it is coming from, with good sources. Going back to my first blog post - Who is giving this advice? What's the context of the advice? What's the nuance about this advice? Furthermore, is it prescriptive? Does it improve your writing to follow as just a list? Do you understand the goal behind the advice? Do you understand why the originator gave the advice?

I have brought my confusion over advice to one of my writers groups many times, and our discussion has often clarified whether it was something I seriously needed to consider thinking about for my writing, discarding as absolute nonsense, or discarding because it just wasn't effective advice for me.

I have gotten absolutely horrendous feedback on my work. Often it's the format rather than the form. My goal in today's post is to give a few "what not to do when giving feedback" and also give some tips on how to get good feedback. Tips I probably could have used years and years ago.

Everyone gets bad feedback. Everyone needs time to process feedback. However, some feedback is worse than others.

Do not give a 1* review thinking you are somehow giving helpful, actionable feedback. Yes, I received a feedback on an early work of mine that was essentially a 1-star review. She didn't like it. Okay, that's where she should have stopped. There was nothing helpful in her comments. The rest was just degrading. 

My mistakes as a writer seeking feedback here were that I didn't have readers yet. I was looking for anyone to give me some feedback. When one of my readers said her friend wanted to read it, I jumped at the chance for another reader. 

Be honest and be positive. These were going to be two different points, but thanks to Darren Groth, they are linked as a single tip for me. I really feel badly for people who think honesty is brutal. Honesty is not brutal. I once received a critique on my query package from another writer. Every single sentence had a negative comment. By the way, this query package had over twenty other writers go through it already. She had the polished and final package. The most "positive" comment she gave was that she also liked one of my comps. If there was a single helpful thing in that deluge of negativity, I couldn't find it. I knew enough to throw that entire critique away after reading through it, giving it a week, and reading through it again.

Give feedback in a way that the writer will be able to access. Before even agreeing to read and give feedback or accept feedback, you should have an agreed upon way in which feedback will be given. This honestly has been how I've always done feedback and how most people discussing feedback will approach it. But sometimes it still needs to be reiterated. This stems from two situations I've been in.
One in which there was an agreed way in which feedback was to be given. This person broke the rules of the group and unfortunately because the feedback itself broke another of my tips, it was disheartening in the least.
Another person insisted on calling me instead of writing anything down. She proceeded to yell at me for five minutes when she called me without much notice and then hung up on me because she "had another phone call she had to take." I literally could not process her feedback at all. It was a waste of both of our times, and also extremely hurtful for me. 

Give feedback at the level of reader and friendship you have.

I had one reader, a new beta reader, who gave me homework, an entire craft book to read in order to receive her feedback because she frames all her writing feedback for particular advice from that book. I'm all for reading craft books. But requiring a writer to read a specific one to get your feedback means you are assessing above what your reading relationship is meant to be. Especially if you are a new beta reader for them. Work your way up to CP before assigning homework. 

I had another reader who left comments all the way through that were "reaction comments." To be fair, reaction comments are awesome and often super helpful. However, if your reactions are negative and slightly nasty, maybe in a tone that you talk to your very good friends in, and you aren't reading for a very good friend or someone you have even read for before, maybe tone down your reaction comments or try to keep them framed positively. (I did ask someone else to read through those comments to make sure I wasn't being too sensitive and she said wouldn't accept comments like that from her CPs and BFFs let alone someone she doesn't have an established relationship with.)

Related, some writers will tell you that you "have to learn" to take feedback like what I've outlined above. No, you don't! You only need to learn to throw it out and never discuss your writing with that person again. 

I have been told as an ND person my entire life that I need to grow thicker skin. You know what? That's not how my brain works no matter how much others want to belittle and bully me and just have me take it. I'm not their punching bag. Everyone has a different line for what is not approrpriate. But "oversensitive" has long been applied in a derogatory way to ND people, and I am who I am. So, those who feel like writers are egotistical snowflakes who can't take criticism? Maybe you are just being mean and not actually being critical in a manner that is remotely helpful and actionable. Yes, there are writers who are ovelry precious about their work. But make sure that's what's actually going on.

All of the above examples I showed to people who have thicker skin than I and they all agreed those were way over any sort of line of acceptable feedback to give or receive. 

The through-line you might have caught above is that I threw away the entire set of feedback when someone gave me feedback in the form of a 1* review, a way that was completely inaccessible to me, 100% negative, or just inappropriate. Because they went so far into a place that I couldn't pick out even a single helpful or actionable item from it. And I never will be. There might have been something helpful embedded in all those tangled thorns, but I don't need to bloody myself trying to get it. 

I find the type of advice and self-flagellation about doing things when "you could be writing" to be toxic and often, untrue. If you aren't writing, could you really be?

If I feel like writing, I am unless there is something more important or pressing to be doing. That's probably because writing is still fun for me. As yet, I haven't imposed unfun things upon it like deadlines, my livelihood, or sense of self-worth. Okay, a little of my sense of self-worth hinges on writing. If I'm not writing and I could be, I'm probably editing because I do have to get pieces edited in order to submit them. Because I want to be read. But likely, I'm doing my day job that pays the bills, taking care of my home or family, or other obligations that currently rank higher in priority than writing. (There are those who feel like those things could all be writing time. For me and many, that way lies burnout and breakdown.)

I also might be reading, which often reading and writing time overlap for me. But reading, whether it's reading short fiction or novels to refill my creative well and know what's currently be published or to give feedback, is a key component to writing.  This last leads to two other pieces of advice I'll address in a different post, ie reading makes you a better writer and critiquing other people's work makes you a better writer. (Short version is, these are both true and good advice. The latter I wish I'd been given well before *checks notes* late Fall 2022.)

If I'm scrolling social media, likely I could be writing. But I don't honestly do a lot of social media scrolling and much of it is writing groups or in some way writing related. And if I'm scrolling social media, I probably don't have a large enough chunk of time to write.

So, yes, in general, stop using "you could be writing" against other writers and against yourself.

This is another piece of advice I wished had been given as outright advice instead of in a backhanded judgemental way during a workhop I took online one summer. And I'm going to bring this up again in another blog post.

​When I ask, what kind of writer are you, I don't mean what genre, form (short or long), style (discovery or outliner), I'm asking about your end goals. Do you write for yourself? Do you write for your friends to read? Do you write and go through the arduous process of getting feedback and improving? Do you write to improve your writing (and all the attendant requirements for improving)? Do you write because you want to be Published some day and get paid? Do you write because you want to be Published some day and don't care about pay? 

Answering these questions will lead to the answer of what type of writer you are. People who earn all their income from writing, and professional speaking about writing, are considered Professional Writers. They classify anybody who isn't making the entirety of their income from writing who writes as Hobbyist Writers. I implore you not to google those two for definitions unless you want to read a whole bunch of blog posts full of self-important judgement about who is and is not, essentially, a "real" writer. 

Reality check: most fiction writers cannot become Professional Writers if the term is defined as making all your money from writing. For example, I am a highly educated, specialized scientist and I earn an income one might expect for someone with a PhD who is an expert in their field. In order for writing to supplant that income, I need to win the lottery (and in this day and age, it is a lottery) of becoming a massive bestseller via traditional pub or put in the additional time and work for self-pub. But in either case, the people who get to that point have often taken years to get there. Many have support means outside of writing, either a partner or family of some sort. Strangely enough, I spent a lot of time and effort to become the scientist that I am. I love writing. But I already made the sacrifices to become a scientist. I don't have the option to repeat those same sacrifices to become a Professional Writer where 100% of my income comes from writing. I'd have to time travel and make different decisions in my life to fit the definition of Professional Writer. Or I'd have to win the actual lottery to put in the years to make the entirety of my income writing. And if I won that lottery, does that preclude the definition of being a professional writer?

A Hobbyist Writer will generally write for the enjoyment of it, share with friends and readers through direct means, and likely not make any money or earn a pittance from it.

This is where I believe there is a middle ground type of writer. A writer who puts in the hours 20 or more a week, which is equivalent to a part-time job or more, with a goal of getting read by many people through indirect means and strives for pay at a professional rate (either by getting published at, for example, SFWA pro-rate paying markets for short-form genre or by getting a novel traditionally published or via a self-publishing strategy.) This writer improves their story-telling and craft through reading subject matter books, attending workshops, and reading critically. But they aren't going to quit a day job, or can't.

Knowing what your goals are leads into the next question.

I just listed above generally what I'm doing in those time periods I've been told "you could be writing" and my response is No, I could not. But, more, it's important to understand what "counts" as writing and what doesn't.

I'm not going to define that for you. I've got my list of what counts and doesn't count for me.

But there are writing-adjacent items that probably don't count as writing. These would be the business end of writing if you happen to be one of the people who want to get paid for their fiction writing. This is the querying and submissions portion of the process. I do not count sending query letters or submissions to short markets as writing. Emails and communication with agents and publishers don't count as writing. Networking and attending conferences, much as I love it and would love for it to, don't count as actual writing for me.

When I spend 3-hours in an online workshop or 3 days at an in-person writing conference, these don't count as writing even though the goal is that my writing will be improved by learning the skills presented in those workshops and at those conferences. That's possibly time I "could be writing." 

Irony, the time I've spent writing this blog, I'm physically writing. But, it doesn't count as writing. It counts as the business of writing for me.

Funnily enough, the more successful you are, the more time the non-writing business of writing will take up. Time you "could be writing." But if you don't do those things, it won't matter if you're writing, you aren't commiting enough time to that other end of getting paid for writing.

My advice, decide what kind of writer you are and set aside your writing time and a distinct and different business of writing time.

The title and topic of this series is Writing Advice and Feedback and I haven't talked about feedback yet. So, here we go! Today, I'm going to talk about receiving feedback. A later blogpost will talk about giving it.

The best advice about receiving and using feedback is the same as for writing advice, take what works for you and leave the rest!

Read through your feedback. Let it stew and marinate. Freeze it for a while. Then come back to it a second or a third time. 

How do you decide what works for you? How do you know you're implementing the good feedback?

I've read and been given two completely conflicting pieces of advice about this. A) The feedback that makes sense and resonates with you is the feedback you should follow. 1.) The feedback that hurts the most and makes you cry and suffer is the feedback you should follow.

I tend to think the people giving advice 1 think they are also giving advice A. But, for me, the feedback that hurts the most often makes the least sense to me. The feedback that hurts the most is usually feedback that shouldn't have been given to me. (I'll talk about how you know if you're giving feedback you should be giving in another post.)
​
The people who give advice about feedback #1 suggest that it hurts because you know it needs to change and you don't want to. But I have found that the feedback that resonates and points out something that should change that I should look at usually doesn't hurt. It doesn't make me cry or hate writing or feel like I should never write again. 

Giving and Taking Feedback is something I think about a lot. In my career, I have taught classes of 200 people where evaluations by students were required. I would receive 198 positive and glowing reviews. But those 2 reviews that were just nasty - the person who suggested I was teaching drunk (I have never) or the person who suggested I was bribing students for good evals (just, no) - those stuck with me (more than a decade later). Which means negative comments posed as feedback rather than constructive helpful comments stick with me.

I believe it was Brandon Sanderson on the Writing Excuses podcast who said he takes maybe 25% of the feedback his CPs and beta readers give him. Now, I'm no Brandon Sanderson, but I was floored when he said that. I replayed that minute or so multiple times. Because I felt like if someone was reading my work and commented their take, I absolutely had to address it in some way. But I don't. You don't. You can look at a piece of feedback and say, "That is more about them than my work" and walk away.

I had a CP going through and making comments about unnecessary redundancies in a novel. Nearly every single one was marked on new stuff I'd put in because of a previous reader not understanding something and I thought I had to address it. I struck nearly all of that new stuff back out. Because one reader not understanding something doesn't mean my work wasn't understandable. (This next bit is a real situation about my writing.) If a cis-het-able-bodied white man doesn't understand how misogyny works? That's not my problem. I don't need to make my characters and events more understandable to him. Honestly, once that was pointed out to me, I saw where much of the feedback I received was built around internalized sexism from the reader. Frankly, I had two readers who were so deep in a cis-het-white-able-bodied-NT-man reading of my work that the feedback they gave was completely useless. I wish I'd understood that for the first person and I'm eternally grateful I understood it for the second. PS, neither of those readers were NT. Which means they'd internalized NT thinking about reading. That opens the door to another question I don't have answers to (Do we have to change our work that is meant to show an ND, or disability, or queer understanding of the world and fit it to a different understanding to be published? I don't know but I sure hope not.)

You should not feel terrible about having given someone your work to read (unless you've specifically ignored their requests about triggering issues or were egregious in your disregard for them as a reader, but you probably haven't.)

You should come away from feedback with the attitude of "how can I make this work better? how can I improve my writing going foward?"

If you come away from feedback after letting it rest and simmer and do not see how it makes your work better or leads you to improvement as a writer, disregard it.

Here's my last bit advice about deciding what feedback to take. You can push back. 

If you think a reader is giving poor feedback, you can cut them loose. But, you can also tell them that they may need to assess the feedback they are giving. This may help them improve the feedback they give. This can work out for you if you want to keep them on as a reader. Or you may just be helping the next writer they give feedback to.

My example: I gave another writer feedback on their novel and they very politely told me a specific portion of my feedback was bad and my framing needing adjustment. I am so happy they did so! I thought about why I was giving that feedback and corrected a portion of what I think about and consider when giving feedback. They could have just thrown out that feedback and never said anything. And I wouldn't have learned until later (or never) that I had a bad path in my feedback programming.

For a couple of years now, I've been threatening one of my writing groups to write blog posts about writing advice and feedback. I get a little cranky on these topics. They say, "Do it!" and then I never do.

That is about to change. More than a month ago, I was reading through multiple online writing groups and social media, and statements were made that were both in the good advice and bad advice range of my Writer Advice barometer. I may have written some responses, and may or may not have actually hit enter on sending them. 

This will be a monthly, posted on the second Monday, blog post about Writer Advice and Feedback based around one or two or a slew of Writing Advice or Standard (or non-standard) Feedback and consists of advice within. Because it's not really feasible to comment upon advice without giving some of your own. 

Because I made this plan more than a month before the first post, it means I wrote a bunch of these in advance based upon advice or feedback I've been ruminating on for years. Or it could be on advice or feedback I literally just received and wrote about - months before actually posting. 

I could probably write a whole book on this, and twelve blog posts seems a reasonable start.

Unless something dramatically changes by January 9, 2023 (and it could), I am a published author with two pro-rate published pieces of flash, a third token-rate piece of flash, and one self-published short story on my blog/website. (Oh, and whatever flash and excerpts readers of my newsletter get.) I've also queried and trunked one novel in the hellscape of 2021-22 querying.

I am not a big name. Which makes me an excellent source for the first piece of advice I'm going to give.

What I have is advice and feedback I received in the 1990s when I was trying to write and publish back then, advice I've recieved throughout the years since then, and actively sought out advice and feedback in the past three years after writing ~350,000 words in a 4-6 month period that eventually split into short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels, plus all the words I've written in the years since that outpouring. And I know what it's like when you're first trying to figure out Things About Your Writing and What Advice to Follow. 

My posts will be aimed for newer writers, those who are searching for answers more than for established writers who already know all of this stuff. But maybe there'll be a few gems for those who have been writing for a bit.

Take all writing advice and feedback with a grain of salt. Seriously.

​This is why I'm the perfect person to give this advice. Because I'm not some big name and readers will tend to take my advice with a grain of salt. But when writers seek the advice of Big Names then the advice becomes Laws That Must Be Followed. All advice is given within context. But it's often relayed stripped of the context in which it was given. All people giving advice have who they are and where they come from to take into account.

Everyone has a motivation for giving advice and feedback. Some people are kind, caring people who want to help other writers. Some actively want to shut other writers down. Some are angry. (Most of this advice will come from an angry place for me. Just so you know.) It's kind of important to figure out why someone is giving their advice. Have they sold millions of copies of fiction and are constantly asked for advice so they wrote a book about it? Are they on their publication journey and have a few nuggets to share to help along those behind them on the same path? Are they someone who, whether consciously or subconsciously, wants to pull the ladder up behind them because they believe Publishing is a finite pie with only crumbs left?

Everyone has credentials for giving advice and feedback. I literally just listed mine above. Is the person giving their advice a writer or editor? What have they written and edited? When did they publish or edit? How accepted are the stories they published or edited? People who are bestsellers in the 1990s and people who are bestsellers in the 2020s probably actually have slightly different advice. Because markets change. Following older advice may improve your craft or storytelling, but it may not get you published today. 

As you read through my picking apart or trumpeting the awesomeness of pieces of advice, consider what your goals are as a writer and what your goals are with advice and feedback.

​Writers tend to give advice about Writing and Publishing assuming your goals are the same as their goals. I have definitely received advice that was not meant for me given as though it were personal. Because it was the advice that writer needed to hear when they were at the stage they thought I was. And maybe they misassessed my stage. Or maybe that advice just wasn't meant for me even if the stage assessment was appropriate. 

Of course, I'm taking Generic Advice and giving Generic Advice. Some if it will be given as stage specific and I already suggested who might find my monthly posts on this topic helpful. 

There you go, two pieces of advice already given with a little bit of shade thrown at all advice on writing. Stay tuned next month for more.