#Peoplogue# 18 December 2020
A while back, a friend of mine had called early in the morning. He asked me how the book review he had written had been. I had already read his review. It was good. I was planning about how to give my feedback. I always feel that how I was planning to say it was as important as what I was planning to say. Our way of giving feedback on something needs to be gentle, encouraging, and should facilitate learning the skilful aspects in the writing and making people understand them. Nonetheless, you can find a bit of carelessness, roughness and lack of complete understanding in my feedback sometimes.
My friend sounded a little anxious on the phone. Apparently, he had sent his review to someone and they had simply said that his review was ‘very poorly-written’. “Wasn’t I a good writer at all? Was I a total failure?” These kinds of doubts about his writing skills were making my friend crestfallen.
Whenever we write, give a speech, give a training, tidy up the house, cook something or even dress up for that matter, our general tendency is to ask somebody “How did I do it? Was it good?” Many of those who indulge in writing keep having sceptical thoughts about their writing skills and wonder if they could write as well as they thought they could. They send their written work for review to those who they feel would understand their writing. Their feedback can do two things — either help the writer to polish and improve not only this work but also any future writings through encouragement and understanding OR manage to scare the writer so much that he would not even dream of writing in the future. It even makes them feel that they are unfit to write a single word. Sometimes, even killing the writer in them forever. In fact, each and everyone of us can write. Writing is the embodiment of talking and thinking. Each one of us has the skill to express ourselves in a distinct and unique way. The role of a critic is quite vital in the development of a writer and in the improvement in their writing.
Giving feedback is quite a complicated task. A critic must continuously strive to learn something new. They must identify and praise the valuable facets in the writing and the author’s way of expression in order to encourage the writer, but at the same time, they need to point out and explain the things that can be improved upon. They have to provide the required support and assistance to make their future writing better. Giving feedback is found to be difficult. It is only possible to give proper feedback when we have the meticulousness and humbleness to constantly learn from everything and everyone.
There are some tough spots that we can find quite often in literary critics in: Looking at other people’s writing with the focus on the critic’s own style of expressing to make the critique perfect. The result is that they fail to recognise what and how the writer has written, and fail to learn from their writing. The most important features of a good feedback include the ability to spot the results achieved by a writer, appreciate them, encourage them, and then, giving them some gentle suggestions to hone their writing skills. Critics have to become the facilitator for giving/ recommending them the necessary books and writings as well.
Often, there is a lack of belief in those giving feedback that every literate or educated person has the writing skills and the required knowledge on topics to write. Another problematic area is taking on a perspective of trying to gauge or form a judgement on the other person’s skill and knowledge level. They tend to look at anything less than hundred as zero. As a matter of fact, they forget that there is a difference of 99 between hundred and zero and that every place has its own value. With this attitude, whenever they come upon anyone’s writing that doesn’t meet their expectations and isn’t up to their unattainable standards of perfection, they pass judgements that they didn’t write well or state quite rudely that their writing is rubbish.
Parading your knowledge is not the purpose of feedback. Period. People think of giving feedback as an opportunity to showcase their knowledge on the topic and their expressive capabilities. They give lectures on ‘What to write? How to write?’ In truth, critics have to diligently read the writing to understand the writer’s knowledge and way of expression. Without limiting ourselves to just read the words, we have to think and look at various things like the intent behind the writing, the message the writer wanted to convey, etc..
It is not possible for people who are prone to self-worship of their capabilities and knowledge to give proper feedback. They have a notion that they have immense knowledge and expressive abilities. They think of themselves as a role model. People with this kind of attitude can’t accept the fact that there are some things that other people know which they might not know, and that they can learn from the other’s writing skills.
Especially when dealing with new writers, we aren’t conscious of the many fears and doubts the new writers must have overcome to make an attempt at writing. This is quite important. Many people want to write but they don’t have the necessary belief in their own writing abilities and understanding. They write with loads of self-doubt and hesitancy about whether they can write well. Any negative feedback about their first write-up might reinforce their doubts and might even make them consider putting a full-stop to their writing journey.
Critics think that their responsibility is limited to just giving feedback through their knowledge about the subject and their understanding of expressive skills. However, they forget that their main objective is to become an ally in the development of new writers. They are not aware of how much their feedback results in helping the writer increase their understanding, or how it helps them hone their writing skills.
Neither giving feedback in a subject unknown to them, nor saying “It is great” just for the sake of politeness beneficial or useful for anyone.
T Venkateshwarlu