The feedback loop

How hard do you want it?

Dear Writer,

I have to listen to podcasts in order to sleep. It started about fourteen years ago when the kids’ dad started snoring like… hard. I love the guy, he’s one of my best friends to this day, but he lives in Austin now and I’m in Syracuse and sometimes… I swear I can still hear him. This was also about the time that I had a portable .MP3 player (it was pre-smartphone for me) and I would just put my headphones in and listen to podcasts and be able to sleep.

Fourteen years later, I can’t sleep without podcasts, but they have to be a particular kind of podcast. The energy needs to be pretty level, so no cackling like what happens on a Chipperish podcast every time Joshua or Noelle or Kelly or Alisa says something to crack me the fuck up. Production has to be excellent; bad audio distracts me too much. The discussions need to be interesting and thought-provoking, but not scary or infuriating, so no real crime or politics.

Then I came across “No Stupid Questions” with hosts Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth and… :::chef’s kiss:::

Well… almost. What can happen is if I wake up a little in the middle of the night and they’re talking about something really interesting, I’ll wake all the way up and think about it and have a million ideas and then go into my Trello app on my phone and jot down all my thoughts at three in the morning.

It was their episode about handling criticism that gave me all the thoughts, and then last week Alisa and I were talking about both taking and giving criticism while recording an episode of Endless, and it feels like maybe now is the moment for us to have this conversation.

So here we go.

As a culture critic, I’ve lived on both sides of this double-edged sword and I found the conversation interesting. For one thing, Stephen and Angela kind of use the concepts of feedback, negative feedback, and criticism interchangeably, and they talk about this concept called “radical candor” and it was a really interesting discussion. I recommend the listen.

But I want to spend a little time here defining our terms, and taking a look at those of us who want every bit of negative, harsh, devastating feedback we can get our masochistic little hands on… and those of us who feel ashamed and embarrassed to say that we don't really want to beaten to a bloody pulp, like that makes us weak.

That does not make you weak, by the way. Just a little spoiler for later when we get there; not wanting to get the shit beat out of you does not make you weak.

And wanting to get the shit beat out of you… a position of which I have been very guilty in the past… does not make you strong.

But before we get there… let’s define our damn terms.

For the purposes of this letter, I’m going to say feedback is any response to your work, be it flattering or not. People who love up on you and say everything is perfect are giving feedback that is just as valid as the people who send you eighteen single-spaced pages of all the ways in which you’ve failed yourself, your reader and storytelling in general.

So feedback is neither negative nor positive… it’s just feedback.

Criticism is feedback with expertise. Again, not positive or negative here; it’s just feedback from a person who knows what they’re talking about, and can talk about it in depth with specifics.

Radical candor looks, to me, like brutal honesty making eyes at you from under the brim of a floppy hat, and here’s how I feel about brutal honesty; I think often the honesty is used as an excuse to engage in the brutality. And that is me being brutally honest about that.

When I first started writing, I craved that brutal feedback, because I thought it would make me a better writer. I thought it would make me tough, that it would make my work stronger, that I would develop the thick skin you need if you’re going to swim in creative waters. Looking back, I realize that what I really wanted was two things; for my work to be so thoroughly scrutinized that it would be perfect, and for me to be so tough that if anyone thought it wasn’t perfect, I woudn’t care.

You will not be surprised, I’m sure, to learn that I failed in both ambitions.

I once said on a podcast that perfectionism is just running from vulnerability, and I think I’d stand by that now. For me, the appeal of brutal feedback was to protect myself from ever setting a foot wrong, from ever doing work that wasn’t perfect.

Looking back now, I see two things. One, it didn’t work. Two, it caused me to spend all my energy hunting down my flaws, rather than calling my strengths to aid me, and I think my work suffered because of that.

Now, there’s no doubt that feedback is good for writers, and probably for all creators. But I don’t think that brutal feedback is healthy. I think brutal feedback makes creators shrink rather than expand. It makes them defensive rather than curious. It makes them tough when they may need to be tender; you have to feel things to write about them.

Recently, Alisa and I were talking on the Endless podcast about criticism, and she said that she didn’t respond well to brutally honest feedback, and she wondered if it made her weak somehow. If she’d asked me that question ten years ago, I would have said no, but deep inside… I would have thought, Yes.

But in that moment, I realized how brave she was. I craved harsh, brutal feedback because I was afraid. I was afraid of not being perfect, of creating something that someone—anyone—might think was bad. The very idea of asking someone to read something of mine and just tell me the good parts was unthinkable.

Now… I think there’s value to it. I’ve always made room for “what’s your favorite part” feedback during the drafting phase, but once the first draft was done… that’s when the feedback gets serious. And honestly… I still want that criticism. Not brutal, but honest, with expertise and helpful suggestions.

But what I also need is to know my strengths, which ironically has never been a strength of mine. I can give you a list of my weaknesses a mile long, but if you ask me for my strengths, I won’t know them.

Because I never asked anyone to tell me.

In all honesty, I’d rather read a messy story where a writer plays to their strengths than something technically perfect with missed opportunities because the writer was too busy hunkering down, preparing for the slap, and dodging and weaving to avoid it.

As I go into this new phase of my fiction writing career, I don't want to dodge and weave anymore. I want to run, arms open, unafraid of falling down or looking foolish, ready to embrace what I find and create something beautiful from it.

Not perfect.

Beautiful.

I think those two things may be mutually exclusive.

Everything,

L