Feedback Received in the Last 72 Hours

19 things people actually said to me

In the last 72 hours I’ve written 30k plus words and published around 3k of them as a part of inkhaven (30 posts in 30 days).

Along the way, my dear friends have given me lots of gracious, loving feedback.

These are not edits, they are direct quotes from transcripts of recordings of feedback sessions from these “friends”.

I think it’s useful to share them for other people who might be interested in how to become a better writer.

To be clear - inkhaven participants and staff are extremely supportive and kind. My friends less so.

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1

X: “Do you want the cunty version or the nice version?”

Me: “You can be Direct.”

X: “If you weren’t literally sitting next to me right now, I would absolutely not be reading this.”

Me: “Because it has too many words?”

X: “Because it’s bad.”

2

X: “I literally don’t know how you manage to write about such fascinating topics in a way that makes them seem so boring.”

3

X: “This draft is 50% closer, but it still feels like I’m reading a linkedin post about what you learned about b2b sales.”

4

X: “This writing feels kind… not castrated… but like, pedantic?”

5

X: “It’s like you’re writing for the bully at school who’s going to make fun of you and tell you ‘that’s lame’”

6

X: “It’s like you put a condom on yourself, when you should be just freely spaffing about.”

X2: “yeah that’s a good way to put it”

Me: “.......”

7

X: “I mean it’s clear that you’ve put a thousand hours into getting good at writing linkedin posts.”

8

X: “Clearly either the writer of this piece is an idiot, or they think I’m an idiot”

9

X: “The way it’s written is so plain that any attempt at curiosity just slides off of it when attempting to grasp it.”

10

X: “that was the most interesting thing you’ve said about this topic today”

Me: “Thank you this is helpful.”

Me: “Also I hate this”

11

X: “You’re kind of distilling a multicolored experience into a lukewarm grey”

12

X: “Just keep one sentence for every 10 you have now”

13

X: “This reads like it’s been through five levels of sloppification.”

14

X: “So you invented a way to take drugs before you were old enough to get drugs? That’s already more interesting than anything you’ve made me read today.”

15

[After X suggests something]

Me: “I literally said that in the last draft you read”

X: “Well for some reason I didn’t read it.”

16

X: “It’s sort of like if someone was feeding me the feel good version of the question so I can pretend to answer it instead of an actual question.”

17

X: “It’s like I want to be teleported into cloud atlas, you know, but then instead you’re there beside me explaining it to me.”

18

X: “But I think you’re really close, it’s not that bad actually.”

19

X: “You should just write a piece about the feedback you’ve gotten.”

Me: “That’s actually a great idea.”