How to Cope with Feedback

and remain persistent

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that I’m a writer who likes to do events, online and in person.

A couple of weeks ago,

I was on an online panel for Hippocampus Magazine for Creative Non-Fiction and we each had ten minutes to present on a Craft (Writing) topic, Mine was “Ummm, Gimme a Sec: Six Tips for Interviewing”.

As is usual with Hippo events,

the caliber of speakers was so high, and everyone had the most gorgeous slides. My publisher (Goose Lane Editions, one of Canada’s first independent publishers) graciously made a template for me, blue and yellow in line with my latest book “One in Six Million” so at least I held my own, but honestly everyone was movie star quality.

At the end of the panel,

there was a Q and A, and someone asked how to cope with feedback.

Excellent question.

The first panelist who responded, did so calmly and nicely about keeping yourself safe, and preserving your blah blah and etc. Which is a very lovely and supportive approach but one with which

I respectfully disagree.

My answer is “It depends if you want to get better.” If you want to get better as a writer, you’ll be open to feedback. You will admit to yourself that you don’t know everything, and that you might have something (or everything) to learn. You will be coachable.

The most helpful feedback I ever received

was during a mentorship I did with the Quebec Writer’s Federation here in Montreal, where I was writing a piece about the fact that I had reached 40 something years old and I had never been to Quebec City, which is only a couple of hours up the road. My mentor told me that I should do some research.

?

She explained that it was important to learn about Quebec City, and read some novels or plays that had taken place in Quebec City and that research informs so much writing, even if it doesn’t make it onto the page.

I can’t even call this helpful, because it was more like

life changing. I mean I research everything. All the time. I even wrote a poetry chapbook about my alarming penchant for researching Honeymoon Sneakers: A Cautionary Tale (Cactus Press 2024).

And this all came from one piece of feedback I received in 2014.

If I would have ignored the feedback, or taken to my bed with a case of the vapours, or given up on writing altogether, I would have not gone on to publish three non-fiction books and a poetry collection.

When you get feedback

my advice is to take it.

People can be insulting.

Insults are not feedback.

I’m talking about actual feedback - like, you have too many secondary characters, you need to drop one. Or, the pacing in chapters 7-9 is a little draggy, pick up the pace. Or even, I’m not sure the premise of an alternate universe governed by poker playing dogs is going to carry through an entire trilogy.

If you get feedback you weren’t expecting

or that generally feels a little negative, you can pull the blankets over your head for an hour, or go for a run on that windy path, or however you lick your particular wounds. But after the wallow, we get up and we keep going.

That’s why we call it persistence.

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