Driving home from the rink recently, my son begrudgingly shared—and I thank the heavens daily he feels safe to share with me—how during practice, a team member made a viscous comment about a mistake he made on the ice. Doing my best not to slam on the brakes and one-eighty-it to drive over the little bastard, I forced myself to reflect on the resilience it will build in my son to take this hard knock and learn from it.
Heaven knows, it sure isn’t easy.
As a writer in the query trenches, rejections are a constant reality. After I pick myself up, and dust myself off, the next step is to search out advice to improve my writing. I, as well, have had to develop a thicker skin and tune into my inner voice to further understand what advice is best to listen to.
Advice comes in many formats;
- FEEDBACK THAT IS JUST RIGHT
Sometimes, the advice is bang on, and I already knew it. Those changes are easy.
- FEEDBACK THAT FESTERS
Other times, I hear the advice and it stews, causing me to ponder and almost travel through the stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then finally acceptance.
My writer friends are chuckling now, recalling my absolute refusal to accept recent good advice. My ranting over Messenger at the injustice, then transitioning to agreeing to maybe changing a little, to complete defeat where I couldn’t write forward and then finally, the moment where I accepted the advice and made the edits.
- FEEDBACK THAT COMES IN A HURTFUL WAY
And, like my son, sometimes the advice comes in a format that is less than savoury and makes me feel terrible. I have learned, the best mentors are hard on us, push us to be better, want us to grow and flourish, but don’t crush us in the process.
For some odd reason, as I groped to find the right words to support my son, my mind flittered to a veterinary conference—of all things—I attended, where the speaker was John Herdman, the former coach of the Canadian Women’s soccer team. A soccer team, I might add, with two Olympic bronze metals and a gold at the Pan Am Games. Not only is this gentleman obviously an amazing coach, he’s also a top notch motivational speaker. My big take away, was how he taught his team members to relish their mistakes—to analyze them, look at them truthfully, turn them over and then do the most powerful thing—they learn from them, set them aside and move on to do better.
Hearing from this world renowned coach, we learned how he fostered an environment where team members were almost jealous of the one who’d made the error, because in this amazing blame free/guilt free environment, the teammate who made the mistake would go on to learn and do better.
Mistakes weren’t shamed, they were exalted and seen as gems. They would break each play down, look at it from all sides, think about how things could have gone better and then make that happen. It sounded powerful and look at what it fostered… champions.
I’ve recently been very uncomfortable in my writing, receiving feedback I wasn’t prepared to hear or to do the work on.
There is a fine balance between someone asking you to change an essential key to your art and identity, the bits you guard dear because you know in your core, to change this essential feature would be wrong, however, when multiple people say the same thing, in slightly different ways, to ignore their comments would be folly.
As a writer, you need to be open to the process. You need to be willing to look at the hard bits. To break it down and not take it personally. I know this isn’t easy. I never said it would be easy. However, maybe, just maybe, if we can take the John Herdman approach, our writing will flourish. When you get feedback that FESTERS, relish the hard parts—give it your all and dive into the discomfort.
Since I’ve decided to take this approach and sat back to analyze my recent feedback—just like a soccer player on the field—I now see the comments are interestingly all asking for the same, relatively simple change. I just need to be open to trying. So, I’ll try.
As the difficult conversation with my son wrapped, we discussed through our feelings and I asked him if his feelings were because of the comment on his mistake or how the comment was delivered?
He paused for a moment and then admitted that it was because of the delivery. It felt malicious and this went on to foster a conversation about how my son can now pay attention to his own actions and words so that he doesn’t make anyone else feel the same. Then we discussed how this comment might also feel a little bit terrible because it may have held a note of truth.
Looking at our mistakes or where we can improve, in life and our writing, takes bravery. So, maybe he can check in with his coach or a team member he trusts and ask about how he might have made that play differently—be open to learning and changing. I’m not condoning the rudeness and hurtfulness, but encouraging him to open up to feedback and improve for the whole team.
When we are open to asking the questions about what we might do differently, a world of options will present themselves. This is when profound change will occur. This is when we win medals.
So, the next time your feelings are hurt or a comment about your writing cuts deep… knuckle down, go through all the phases you need to; hurt, anger, resistance, acceptance, curiosity and then guaranteed, your writing will improve.
