Using Feedback to Improve Your Writing

[@user-vc1km3es2z]

Wow, this was a learning opportunity if I ever had one! What differentiates good poetry from bad, I feel, is expert revision. But expert revision isn't something you get to see very often, so I appreciate you providing an example 😌

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks a lot! Revision really is where all the work happens (at least in my experience)!

[@The-Cosmos]

Andrew, You're such a great teacher. You bring up good points and questions we all have but no one answers. You are not getting the views and subscriptions you deserve. But please never stop these videos like many youtubers do. You'll get what you deserve if you continue to persevere

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks for the kind words--it means a lot!

[@joelturnbull9005]

For another, more general, angle on receiving feedback, I’d recommend “Thanks for the Feedback” by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. It has a lot of good advice on how to learn from feedback, even if you don’t think it’s very good feedback.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Cool--thanks for the recommendation!

[@jolinevdk]

This was such a good video! I really enjoyed and appreciated you going through your own work and the feedback you were given. It's always interesting to me to see more of your poetry, but in this case it did more than satisfy my curiosity - it was really instrumental in showing how to use feedback and how it informed the process of revision. Thank you so much, I just know this is going to be one of those gem videos I'll be referring back to and revisit often in the future. Top notch!

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks a bunch--I really appreciate that!

[@concertautist4474]

This video tickled my mind in a most pleasurable fashion. The finger word juices are a-flowin'.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

That's what we want!

[@bigbiggoblin2873]

Banger. Gotta edit a short story now- great advice.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks--get to it!

[@TThom-vb6wq]

I just formed a writing critique group. Thanks for this.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

That's awesome! You're welcome

[@AlienLabrador]

Fantastic video! I feel that we rarely get to see the behind-the-scenes editing journey of published/finished works, so I appreciate the insight. Question - what are your thoughts of using ChatGPT/AI as a beta reader to provide feedback to our works? I had found it to be somewhat useful to pick up on grammatical errors, awkward sentences, pacing issues, and cohesion and transitional issues.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

Thanks! As for your question, AI currently is more of a complex sentence generator than a storyteller. I've heard programmer friends say that some programmers keep rubber ducks on their desks to talk through difficult code with, and I suppose that current AI might serve a similar purpose: if it's helpful as a way to externalize your thoughts, great (but don't forget that you're smarter!)

[@nightelflevel5062]

I like you pulling back on the skull. It is funny at times but it always distracted me when it talked over you. It feels much more like a snarky commentator when it has its own screen time.

[@ormulyce]

Thank you so much. A useful video. 😃

[@WritingwithAndrew]

You bet!

[@BrandonCase]

Solid content, thank you!

[@WritingwithAndrew]

You're welcome--thanks!

[@delstanley1349]

Okay it's about the process of putting together and revising a poem about a six legged bug. Got it! However, the process of The Revision seems to be about a four legged animal! The zebra. There in the second line of the poem. I wonder why a zebra? LOOK at the poem at 17:01in the video and note the parallel structure of the black and white lines. On my screen it looks like a "zebra-esque" pattern!" At 21:10 Andrew says, "The real point though is that this poem has come a real long way from it's original form and it ADAPTED A FEW DIFFERENT SHAPES along the way.........Feedback played a vital role.....because that feedback helped me to identify where my readers' experiences with the piece A-LINE WITH, and diverge from.... Okay I know the word just above should be "align" instead of "A-Line," but I used it instead to help me shamelessly make my fun zebra point, but then again zebra stripes DO actually align. Andrew's conclusion in the final draft was to eliminate most of all the gray areas in the prior drafts and instead use more Bold Lines of Black and White! Hence "zebraed helmet?" To me these little boogers look like they're wearing polo caps, or football ref's caps. Then again, I'm probably conflicting with Andrew's purpose after all, they very thing he was trying to avoid. Hey, I'm just having some fun guys. Loved the video!

[@concertautist4474]

I found this video enjoyable in many different ways. The final poem embodies the same satisfying depth of pleasure.

[@WritingwithAndrew]

🦓

[@TalesofTheEndTimes]

I most certainly did try to break all the rules many a time before I understood the first of them. And though I will not delete those *shudders* “Stories”, I will also never look back on those times with anything less than embarrassment - even as I now revel in thoroughly breaking what rules I think I can get away with. Alas, my poetry is assuredly still so ruinous, being as my childhood practice of it ended with limerick, and I now find myself in dire desire to write the occasional poem - yet lack in my allusion game, to the point where all my poems are so simple it might be strange if a chimpanzee were to question it. But I don’t think submitting it after revising it would work as useful for purposes of education, because though I enjoyed the technique; it is topically inconsistent, and that very technique cannot be divorced from it without the very kind of subject matter necessary to break it apart. It’s a shame then, for I found a path there which thrilled me through and brought me many tears, but I would not subject you to its review, for though poetry is about feeling and expression: some things would have been better never expressed or experienced in others. For all the darkness of Edgar Alan Poe’s depressive downerism, it still holds the silver lining of sparkly fantastical language, and thus leaves me ajoyed with gothic horror. - As for the middle of the videos, the first revised piece, that is super cute. I like it, and, it made a lot more sense to me at a glance. - - third revisement, I can see why you went with that style. It’s easier, though I was rather partial to the alliteration, and especially the absurdity of the Yellowjacket or ladybug ‘hopping’. Had I never seen these aspects, I would have never missed them in the final form, which is probably excellent to my incredibly unscholarly view, I liked it and that’s what matters to me as a reader- Which reminds me: I had to ask a friend of mine fairly recently, down on my knees, head to the floor bowed before them, desperate for clarity: For I was seeing words where they weren’t, looking at a synopsis I had changed a hundred times, seeing phrases in the margins, sections I had thought of and not written, interrogations on ethos, pathos, and logos in the corners, and deleted words leaping right out of the page to {poke} me in the mind and spread their ink all over my brain. She loved the first few sentences, and then was really confused by everything beneath the *obvious leaping off point*. The… original leaping off point. I spent a week of my life: adding one dash, and changing one word. That is the value of another pair of eyes. Thank you for the video, I had to have a good proper think this time.