At Katzinger’s Delicatessen in the historic German Village neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, there’s a wooden comment box, painted with blue sky and clouds, mounted on the wall by the exit door, with a pen on a string and a stack of comment cards. My son Rhett, when he was maybe four years old, walked up to the box, leaned close, and whispered into the slot: “Can you please turn the music down?”
Copyright © 2025 by Maggie Smith. Adapted from Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life by Maggie Smith, to be published in April 2025 by One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, LLC. Reprinted by permission.
We laughed and laughed, and we still joke about it whenever we’re there. He had feedback for the deli, but that wasn’t the way to give it.
In workshop we bring our poems and stories, our essays and plays, our excerpts from longer works, and we hand them to the group. We bring our work not because it is broken and needs to be fixed; workshop isn’t about fixing but about building together.
When I comment on another writer’s work—a student, a mentee, an editorial client—my goal is to help them bring their vision to life and to push their craft further. My goal is never to make another poet’s work more like my own. When I teach workshops I encourage writers to be open to feedback, but I also warn them against the “Franken-poem.” The Franken-poem, like Frankenstein’s monster, is an assemblage of pieces and parts, an awkward combination of others’ ideas. In a workshop one person might say, “Whatever you do, don’t touch the ending. I love the ending!” The person sitting next to them might say, “I think the poem is strong, but I don’t get the ending. I would change it.” One person might prefer first-person point of view; another might suggest third-person. One person might love the title; another person might not.
If you hear that feedback, what do you do? You can’t do it all. You can’t, nor should you try to, satisfy everyone in the room. You have to weigh the various questions and suggestions against your own vision for the piece. Would the piece still sound like you if you made change X? Would it still move the way you want it to if you make change Y? Writing is not a democratic process. Everyone’s say is not weighed equally. When you seek feedback from a workshop or an editor, you are consulting others, but ultimately the decisions must be yours, and you must be able to stand behind them.
The way feedback is given, and the spirit in which it is offered, has everything to do with how that feedback is received. There are various approaches to the writing workshop. A classic model requires the writer to be silent while the group discusses their piece. Some workshop facilitators allow writers to introduce the piece and ask questions of their readers; others don’t allow for any preface or disclaimers. And what about participants’ feedback? In the workshops I attended in college and graduate school, the writer silently took notes while we spoke about their piece, beginning with aspects of the piece we admired and thought were working well, then moving on to questions and suggestions for revision. But what about other models?
I believe in allowing for open dialogue and exploring various possibilities. I give students opportunities to ask one another questions in writing workshops, because I think questioning is often more valuable—and better received—than critique. Critique too often turns into “What’s wrong with this piece and how can we fix it?” And, frankly, when beginning writers give other beginning writers advice, it can be well-intentioned but misguided.
When we center questioning in workshop, we might ask:
Why did you choose to begin the story (poem, essay) here?
Why this title, or this sequence of events, or this ending?
What do you think the effect would have been if you’d done X or Y instead?
What do you want readers to take away from this piece?
How do the craft choices reinforce that takeaway? Or undermine it?
When we ask questions, as opposed to offering prescriptive suggestions on a piece, the focus is on process rather than product: the making of the thing, not just the thing that was made. These discussions aren’t about giving the writer “advice.” They don’t approach a piece of writing as a problem to be fixed. Questioning helps the writer pay attention to and articulate the craft choices they’ve made. It allows them to hear how those choices have impacted readers. The author then has a chance to consider and reconsider—revise, or see again—their choices.
My hope in these question-centered workshop discussions is that the thinking a writer does about craft is broad—it’s not limited to that particular piece of writing, but rather it can be applied to other pieces, pieces the writer has already written and now wants to return to, and pieces they have yet to write. It will also encourage the writer to ask questions of themselves as they draft. We all hear the voices of our peers and mentors in our heads long after a workshop. We remember their questions. We can anticipate their reactions.
Constructive feedback helps writers recognize their strengths and weaknesses, consider new revision strategies, and think about how their work is part of the literary conversation. Here are some examples of feedback that have been particularly helpful to me. As you’ll see in all of these examples, the feedback is phrased as an offering, an invitation. They are specific without being overly prescriptive.
I think you can say less here. Let the image do the work.
The ending of the poem happens too quickly. I could use more time here to absorb the landing, so maybe divide the last sentence into two shorter sentences?
I get really invested in the essay in the third paragraph, so maybe move that material up?
I could use some more backstory here—nothing much, just a sentence or two of context.
When I respond to other writers’ work, I like to give reading recommendations: books or individual pieces I think the writer should spend some time with. What other writers are grappling with similar subject matter? What writers, both contemporary and otherwise, share a similar aesthetic? My own mentors did this for me, and it was always incredibly helpful. I believe in reading widely and reading against the grain of your own aesthetic. Some of the writers and books that have been instrumental to me aren’t “like” my work at all; spending time with them stretches me and shows me possibilities I might not have come to on my own.
At its best, critique is an exploration of possibility. It might sound masochistic, but I’d take a constructive, well-considered critique over praise any day. As a Midwesterner, when someone compliments me, my first instinct is to prove them wrong. “Nice dress!” someone says. “This old rag? I got it on clearance…eight years ago.” “Cool glasses,” someone says. “I am so nearsighted; I’d be lost without them.”
Why is it so hard to say, simply, thank you? But I digress.
Critique—phrased kindly, offered as an invitation to consider, not as a prescriptive to-do list—is actionable. It gives you something to do. It reveals the rough spots in a draft: the sandpapery bits, the splinters, the nails sticking out of the boards. Praise smooths and sands your perception so that you can’t feel the rough spots. Feeling the splinters means you’ll have to sand them down yourself, and you’ll have to learn how.
Said another way: Praise can be just as dangerous as criticism. If you believe the worst things people say about you, you might stop. You might lose your nerve. If you believe the praise, you might get complacent. Don’t put too much stock into criticism or praise; both can get in the way of the work.
Feedback helps you see your work through a clearer lens, so that you may get to know your writing self better in the process. Having new eyes on your work is an opportunity for you to look again with fresh eyes—to revise, to resee. But look out: Once you’ve seen your work anew, you can’t go back. Once the questions and suggestions of others are rattling around in your brain, you’ll have a hard time ignoring that ruckus. You’ll have to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Maggie Smith is the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including My Thoughts Have Wings (Balzer + Bray, 2024), You Could Make This Place Beautiful (One Signal Publishers, 2023), Goldenrod (One Signal Publishers, 2021), Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal Publishers, 2020), and Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017). A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in the New York Times, the Nation, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Atlantic, and more. You can follow her on social media, @MaggieSmithPoet.
Thumbnail credit: Devon Albeit Photography