Why Writers Love Feedback

 

     As writers, so much of our work goes unseen.

     And I'm not just talking about the strenuous behind-the-screen writing process "work" that readers can only imagine. I'm also talking about the works themselves: rough drafts stuffed in tattered notebooks, the drafted texts in the Notes section of our phones, the journal entries, the sad poetry, and the happy love songs that we scribble with a pen or thumb onto a screen.

     So much goes unpublished, unseen, unrecognized. But we write it from the depths of our souls anyway.

     The polished compositions—the pristine manuscripts, the well-edited personal statements, and cried-over twenty-page academic essays—are the ones that we send out into the world.

     The public sees these labors as valuable, but they are not always labors of love as much as they are labors of completion to display our competence. It's as if we have to prove our writing's worth to the world to feel safe continuing to write in private.

     Yet when the blank page is full, and the essay is double spaced . . . when the world has lost count of our word count . . . and we can write just for ourselves, that is when our words truly come alive.

     We begin to write in a way that moves readers' hearts because we're speaking honestly from our own. We compose texts that speak clearly. We give our readers something worth responding to.

     As an editor, I appreciate well-written words so much more now. As a proofreader, I revel in the proper placement of an apostrophe or comma. As a reviewer of literature, I know that every author needs to hear both the pros and cons of their work to grow as a writer.

     Therefore, readers, send us a list of corrections and edits. Send us those jaw-dropping gifs, those happy emojis. Send us comments and emails. Send us words that encourage and words that challenge.

     Bring your words on because we writers love words, and hearing them helps us continue to write.

     After all, we love words. We cannot help our souls.

~Madeline

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