On Feedback
I'm always a little puzzled by the fact that feedback, giving and receiving,
is such a hot issue. You'd think it would be a no-brainer. Someone waves
something nice in front of your face, you compliment them on it. Someone
compliments you, you say thank you. Alas, because this is fandom, nothing is
simple. However, I think there would probably be a lot more fics getting
feedback in this world, and a lot more people giving feedback, if both
sides of the feedback economy kept one simple principle in mind: what people are
rewarded for, they continue to do. When they get nothing out of it or are
smacked down for it, they stop doing it. When one half stops doing something,
both halves suffer.
First off, let me say that I don't believe that any given writer is entitled
to feedback, good or bad. I think that writers should take feedback in the
spirit in which it was given and be glad (or not, I suppose, depending on the
spirit) that someone took the time to send it to them. I think that writers who
look down their noses at any feedback that isn't a two-page letter of criticism
with huge attention to detail and no less than three keenly observed and helpful
points for improvement should be sent back to kindergarten to learn remedial
manners, and if that doesn't work they should be hit with a meat cleaver until
they stop making the rest of us look like the second coming of Joan Crawford,
because we? Do not need any assistance in that area, thank you. We are all over
the festive-monsters-of-egotism-and-drama thing like white on rice already.
Please don't help. You're asking for an unreasonable investment in time and
energy from readers who probably just want to see Draco boffing Harry. If you
want that kind of concrit, find a writers' circle, or form one yourself, and in
the meantime make clear when you post that you neither appreciate nor want
feedback.
However.
If I don't think that anyone's entitled to feedback, I also don't think that
anyone's entitled to fanfic; and I think that readers who can't or won't make
time to write a couple of lines of feedback, or who think that the fandom social
contract that calls for giving feedback is some sort of unconscionable violation
of their civil liberties, should not be surprised or indignant when a fanfic
writer decides that she has better things to do with her time and energy than
invest it in posting fanfic when that investment never sees any return. A friend
of mine posted a fic that got very little feedback, then got outraged wails of
protest when she withdrew it to send it to a zine - which was, I'm sorry,
unreasonable on the part of the people doing the protesting. Writers aren't
psychic. We don't know you're enjoying a fic if you never say so. Many of us, in
fact, are likely to assume that you don't give a rat's ass if the fic vanishes
forever from the face of the Earth. If you're enjoying a fic and want to see
more of it, the time to say so is before the writer decides to
discontinue it or render it inaccessible to you.
See, I view fic-posting and feedback as two halves of a symbiont circle, though
which of us are the Naboo and which are the Gungans is more than I'd care to
say. You give something, you get something. It's unreasonable to expect people
to send feedback for every fic they read, whether they like it or not. However,
it always pisses me off to see people complain that fanfic writers in general
don't have the right to expect feedback; because while individually, no,
we don't, I would argue that fanfic writers as a collective and contributing
subset of the fandom damn certainly do. The alternative is to expect them to
placidly dispense fics for the readers' enjoyment as if the writers were urns
full of free coffee, contributing to the fandom without getting anything in
return. If the feedback's not going to me, okay, but it bloody well better be
going to someone.
"But they should be writing for the satisfaction of writing!" I hear you
protesting. Yes, they should. And they can accomplish that perfectly well with
fics that never leave their hard drives for the rest of us to enjoy. Writing and
posting are not the same thing, and the reward for posting is not the process of
formatting the fic and hitting the "upload" button, unless you just like to play
around with your web site and really don't care what goes on it. I've read a lot
of fics that really contributed something to my understanding of the canon; I've
read HP fics that I thought, though it gives me a qualm to say it, made better
use of the world and characters than Rowling has. I've benefited from those fics.
Why shouldn't the person who gave them to me be able to (non-tangibly) benefit
from them as well?
No matter which half of the circle you're sitting in at the moment (and remember
that writers are also readers), whether you're talking about a fic you really
enjoyed or a note saying that someone enjoyed your fic, the same rule applies:
Someone's given you something nice. Say thank you.
I can't say how representative I am of fanfic writers as a whole in my view on
feedback, but I think I'm fairly representative, so let me lay out mine:
And that's it, really. Not as complicated as all that.