FUBAR Feedback (Part Two)

Years ago, in a graduate writing workshop at the University of Utah, a woman whose name I can't remember submitted a piece that had already been accepted for publication. She didn't tell us that, though.

I don't remember what anyone said about her piece – I barely remember the general topic of her essay – but I know it was the usual group-feedback feeding frenzy.

You probably have some idea of how these things go. Person A says something like, “I really liked that image at the beginning, but I'm left wondering...what does it have to do with the rest of the piece?” and Person B says, “Oh, I thought that image carried through beautifully! It's like, the crumpled tissue we see in the first paragraph, those papery folds disclose the, I don't know, the je ne sais quoi that just, you know, NAILS the emotional tone. BAM. The reader's crucified, right from the git-go. But in my opinion, that's the problem. We're bleeding, here – which means we can't pay attention to that – forgive me, but dull is the word I want – dinner scene on page 2.” Then the professor says, “So, I think this essay marks quite a departure from the other work we've seen from Gladys this semester. What do we, as a group, make of that?”

So anyway, this woman let us go through the whole constructive criticism charade from start to finish, and only when we slid our marked-up copies of her essay across the table at her did she finally announce that the piece we'd just workshopped was probably already in press. It was too late to change anything.

Some of us were annoyed. Why had she wasted our time?

It was an experiment, she said. She'd wondered whether a finished piece – something polished enough to've met a publisher's approval – would get the same reception as the drafts she usually submitted for critique, and now she had her answer. There was no difference. Context was everything. If we'd come across her essay in a lit mag, no doubt we would have approached it very differently.

Unless you are a critic, someone whose job it is to review other people's creations, you're not in “feedback” mode when you walk into a gallery or a bookstore. You evaluate, sure, but you don't come up with suggestions. You say, “Wow, I love the crazy color – but it would look awful in my living room,” not, “What if you layered an ocher wash over this neon blue?” You say, “Yeah, I know Ethan Frome is a classic, but it made me want to shoot myself,” not, “I'm not sure about the unremitting hopelessness – maybe you could change it up a bit, throw in a little spring imagery here and there?”

I'm beginning to wonder whether the whole CONCEPT of feedback is FUBAR.

Full disclosure: I am pretty sure that not a single one of my artistic creations has ever improved because I've taken someone else's suggestion about how to improve it. Post-feedback, either I tinker with the piece until I've sapped the life out of it, or (more commonly) I throw in the towel.

I know some people find feedback from others to be hugely beneficial in their creative process. And I have to admit that I have benefited from feedback in a general sort of way: all those writing workshops I took did teach me a lot about how to be a better writer. But when it comes to making that specific poem or painting better, feedback usually sends me straight into “fix-it” mode, and the results are often irreparable.

It may be that I don't trust my own voice enough. It may be that I don't work well with others. It may be that I give up too easily. It may be that I have unreasonable expectations of myself. It may be that I think I have to please everyone. In other words, it may be that the problem isn't feedback, per se, but my dysfunctional approach to it.

I keep thinking of a story I once heard. It's about an apprentice potter who works and works until he makes a pot he thinks is perfect. He proudly presents it to the master, who inspects it, nods approvingly, then throws it to the floor, shattering it to bits. “Make another one like this tomorrow,” he says, and leaves the room. A hundred “perfect” pots later, the apprentice potter finally makes one worth keeping.

Maybe it's time for an experiment. I think it's time for me to take a page from that woman in the writing workshop all those years ago. I've decided I'm not going to ask anyone for feedback on anything until I think it's as perfect as I can make it. I'm not going to ask for feedback on anything until it's too late to fix it. I'm guessing I'll end up with a lot of finished pots in pieces on the floor this way, but I'll probably be a lot more productive. It's time to stop spending all my time fussing over the “finishing touches” on lumps of clay that will never see the inside of a firing kiln.