One good thing about having friends is that they are usually happy to be free experimental subjects of random ideas (and if they’re not, they’re not real friends). I had this random idea of having a writing feedback group where you’re only allowed to give positive feedback. I floated the idea to my friend Will, who immediately jumped on board. We later recruited two other friends — Chris from this blog and also Elliott. This post is a preliminary report.
Here is the initial set up: we each come with 2-5 pages of writing. They have to be first or second drafts; nothing more polished than that. We read each other’s writing and take notes as you would normally. We then discuss each writing in turn, giving only positive feedback. The positive feedback has to be specific and concrete — it can’t just be “yeah your writing is nice”. We are allowed to (favourably) compare this writing with other people’s writings but not with our own.
Why might something like this be a good idea? Here are some major reasons:
- We are never taught and rarely practice giving precise positive feedback. This, I think, hinders our ability to precisely and concretely identify why exactly we enjoy some readings over others. If we could learn to articulate why something is good, it should help us imitate it better.
- There is a common sentiment that positive feedback is not useful and constructive feedback is all negative. This, I think, is because people don’t give useful positive feedback (because they don’t know how; see above). The problem, though, is that if you only know what you’re doing wrong and not what you’re doing right, it’s really hard to know how to do the right thing.
- Relatedly, I think positive feedback helps us situate negative feedback. When someone says to me “I don’t like this part”, it’s hard to tell whether it’s really bad and needs changing or whether it’s just a difference in style. However, if a second commenter doesn’t hate the same part, they rarely say to me “this part is good”, because people rarely give unsolicited positive feedback. So I have no way of knowing whether the second commenter also hates it and just didn’t mention it or whether it’s actually good. Having a place where people talk about what they like can help disambiguate cases like these.
- For most academics, writing is associated with self-criticism, because writing is associated with criticism, because people only give criticisms to each other. Many writers have persistent negative self-talk inside their head as they write, imitating the negative voices they often hear when they present their writing to others. By having a dedicated time where you’re flooded with positive comments associated with your writing, it may hopefully lessen the negativity.
- Finally and similar to above, the positive feedback group is hopefully something we would come to anticipate with excitement — an emotion rarely associated with the act of “having my writing evaluated”. As time goes on, I’m hoping that this excitement would serve as a motivation for getting some first drafts out, because you know 100% you’re going to get praised for it.
(By the way, if anyone would like to do a project of something on it, hit me up!)
Today our group met for the first time. Here are some observations on giving feedback:
- It is actually really hard to turn off the editing/ problem finding part of the brain when I read. For reasons we can all speculate, good writing just doesn’t “stick out”. They’re good; they’re clear; I ignore them. Instead, my attention is always caught immediately by parts that could be changed.
- Even when I see that a part is good, it’s really hard to find words to describe it. I find myself noting “this argument is very clear and flows naturally and logically” a lot, which is (granted) more concrete than “good argument” but less concrete than the negative comments I’m used to producing. For example, two of my friends had different writing styles but they both work well in making the argument easy to follow. It was very hard to give different descriptions of why they were able to do that.
- As we talked, it does become easier. It’s kinda like Q&A sessions usually start slow but can run on forever — people build on top of each other when they think up questions. Similarly, we were able to build on top of each other when trying to describe why something was good. Sometimes my friend would give a description and I would be like “yes, that was exactly why I liked it”. Just like any other discussion, talking more made it easier to put thoughts into words.
- On the flip side, there were quite a few cases where my friend identified something they liked and I actually wasn’t all that impressed. It helps a lot in reminding me that people do differ in their appreciation of writing. What one person sees as negative can be a positive highlight in someone else’s eyes. This was especially interesting because some of us have read earlier versions of the same writings of others in a usual context, and so have given negative comments about some of the aspects. Hearing another person say that they actually really enjoyed this aspect was interesting.
Here are some observations on receiving feedback:
- It’s actually surprisingly hard to listen to good comments about your work for an extended period of time. It’s a really weird experience where my brain would be like “oh they’re just being polite” and then gets confused by how long this politeness takes. It’s also weird in that I didn’t know how to respond. What’re you supposed to say when someone says “your sentence here is just really focused and well-written and has exactly the right amount of information”?
- It does make me look at my own writing differently. In particular, I got praised several times for things I actually really didn’t like. I wrote the sentences down as placeholders for when I thought things through more. Hearing from others that they were really helped by those sentences was unexpected.
- It also makes me enjoy the project more. Obviously, it’s an early-stage project and I haven’t thought many things through and the writing was preliminary and I know I wasn’t getting all the comments I could on it, but I still feel better about it now. There was quite a bit of evidence (I don’t actually know how much of it survived the replication crisis) that expressing positive thoughts (such as telling yourself you can do it) out loud has physiologically measurable benefits in reducing stress. Even if you think you already know that, say, your work is worthwhile and your writing isn’t horrible, hearing others say it out loud for 30min still makes a difference.
So, yeah, that’s all my notes from our first meeting. I’ll report back after our next meeting. I’m really excited about this idea so please tell me if you like it too 🙂 (No need to tell me if you don’t like it 😉
Will has kindly also written something and allowed me to share it. Here’s his reflection:
Giving: I actually really enjoyed giving the positive feedback.
It was hard at first to supress the urge to edit. But once I got in the swing of things there was a certain joy in enjoying the writing of others. I have tried in the past to give positive feedback to undergraduates on their essays and I found it really hard. I was pleasantly surprised, though I probably shouldn’t have been, to find that all 3 of my friends had really excellent writing, even if it was in different ways. So it actually wasn’t hard to find things to say about it. I mostly commented on the way things were written. In part because all of the papers were outside of my topic area. I would have liked to say more about the content but find that much harder than saying things about the writing.Receiving: Hearing specific positive feedback was like a balm of my soul. It was an emotional experience. As someone with learning difficulties I’m so used to people saying negative things about my work that it didn’t even occur to me that there was anything positive to say. And while I know that people have said positive things about my writing in the past, in particular on essay feedback and from my supervisor. They have always been combined with so much more criticism. So I think I never really took any of it to heart. I certainly couldn’t tell you things that I think are good about my writing. I was so unhappy with the piece that we read that it was stopping me from continuing working on the essay.
I thought there is no way anyone would have anything positive to say about it or if they did they would just be being polite. There’s still a part of my brain that wants to say that or that they had to say positive things, so they found something positive to say. I know that’s not how I felt when I was reading other people’s work and so I should reasonably think that wasn’t how they felt. Hearing concrete positive things about a piece of writing was extremely uplifting. It changed how I felt about it and helped me continue working on the project. It really told me things that I had no idea about in terms of my writing. And the fact that people agreed with each other really help. I feel like I’m going to treasure the experience and try and remember the things people said when I’m feeling down to remind myself that there are positive things about my writing.
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