One of the biggest challenges I have faced in developing my writing was in finding the right people to critique my work. Classes have helped, as I’ve come across some wonderful instructors, but otherwise, finding people who (a) gave me actionable feedback and (b) were available for ongoing discussion has been tricky.

Actionable feedback: To really move your Art forward, you need outside opinions, but those opinions need to be of the variety that helps you see not only what works and what doesn’t, but also how to understand both and push the work further.

Although praise like “I loved it” is nice and criticism like “I just didn’t feel it” can be crushing, neither helps you develop your Art because neither offers you specifics. This is typically a sign of someone who is not near your skill level and cannot articulate their thoughts (not meant as a criticism of the person offering feedback).

Likewise, you don’t necessarily benefit from a critique of someone way above your skill level. Through no fault of their own, these individuals are likely to take certain information for granted and provide feedback you cannot work with because you don’t understand it and/or that overwhelms you in terms of sheer volume. This, I believe, is why so few experts in any discipline are good teachers of that discipline. We all simply forget what it’s like not to know or know how to apply “the basics”.

Instead, we need to find someone who is roughly at the same skill level as ourselves and ideally, who suffers different weaknesses or challenges than ourselves. In such a situation, a symbiotic relationship can form.

These are the people who will recognize and help you see what is working while at the same time, point out the problem areas and offer insights (or commiseration) on how to address the issues.

Such a meeting of equals will also help ensure that one of you doesn’t feel like you’re doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship and getting very little in return. This is critical in building a relationship of trust, particularly when both of you are making yourself vulnerable in exposing your Art, untested.

In the next post, we’ll look at the availability question and then wrap up with a brief discussion of the transience of it all.

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission…how sweet)