Week 8 Comments and Feedback

I have gotten some excellent feedback comments from some of the other students in the class. Many of them have been extremely helpful. The comments that I'm finding particular useful are formatting comments and those highlighting areas within my story that might need more detail. The formatting comments have helped me to refine the appearance of my project page. It might not be extremely sophisticated, but I think it's looking rather attractive. I got some very good advice in that area. The comments about expanding certain details within my stories have also been very helpful when I do my editing. Having another pair of eyes (or many other pairs in this case) have helped to find the areas of my story that need to be expanded to either enhance the story or clear up confusion.

However, I'm not feeling overwhelmingly confident about the quality of my own feedback. I tend to read stories as 'this is what the writer wants me to know, therefore this is the story.' That's good from the perspective of enjoying and being entertained by stories, but not particularly helpful when critiquing them. I just don't really have any questions that I want to ask, so it's difficult for me to find constructive ways to help other people with what to add or include. The main points that I notice tend to be spelling, grammar, and word choice. But if all of my comments are exclusively about those things it makes me feel just nitpicky and anal. Also, regarding word choice, who am I to decide why and how the story would sound better? It's their story, not mine! I'm having far more difficulty providing feedback that any other part of this class.

I feel that I have a pretty good handle on some of my classmates based on their blog posts and their introductions. Some are a bit less of an open book, but that tells me something on its own. I'm mostly comfortable with my own introduction and posts. I don't want to lay all the parts of myself out for everyone to see, but I've laid out enough.

Going forward, I want to find a way to provide more useful feedback to my fellow students. I just don't feel that I'm being helpful right now, although I am trying! I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do to get better, but I'll keep trying until I figure it out.

(Cheezburger)

This feedback cut sums up how I try to look at the feedback that is given to me and what I provide. The feedback that has been most helpful to me is the stuff that has been said by several different people. If it's something that stands out to more than one person, then it's something that I definitely need to look at.