The Worst Best Feedback I Ever Received — and Why it Stuck With Me

A bad teacher made a solid point, but it took me years to understand it

Back when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree, I took my first Creative Nonfiction class with a new professor. He was fiery, abrasive, and often made inappropriate sexual comments to the young women in the class under the mesh shield of being a gay man. He adored the students who wrote about being institutionalized, torrid affairs, struggles with addiction — even if it wasn't their own addiction, even if the stories were far more "creative" than "nonfiction."

We did not get along.

I was (and am) a poet by nature: political, romantic, searching. The drama and trauma in my life was too personal, too factual, and the need to put it on paper through action rather than metaphor felt more confessional than necessary for lil old me. Instead I wrote a piece about small gestures of kindness which he tore apart for being preachy and fellow students had to come to my defense — the rule was that we could not defend ourselves (or speak at all).

Eventually we hit a boiling point. I submitted an essay of a bicycle trip down the Pacific Coast, a trip where I decided to fight for my life. When it came time for class discussion, he raged. His face turned red. My story made him mad mad. "You make me care so much, your voice is intoxicating, I cannot stop reading, and yet... NOTHING HAPPENS! We are with you down these winding, fogged roads, climbing the mountains, plowing butterflies. We feel your tension, we agonize with you, and yet you just. Keep. Riding. On." His tone was so accusatory, you could hear classmates shift in their seats to try to find a safe angle to divert the feedback that wouldn't implicate them as well. I broke the solemn rule. I spoke.

"That's the point."

"WHAT?!"

I started crying, a response that comes involuntarily and frustratingly when I am angry, especially when I am holding in the rage of every feckless conversation I've muffled with a man who assumes authority with indictment, despite holding not a clue to play a boardgame.

"The point of the story is that I almost died, and I didn't. The beauty is that nothing happened. I lived."

We stared at each other for a moment and suddenly class was over. A few days later, we went out for coffee to discuss the tension.

"Why did you cry?" he asked.

"Why don't you like me?" I asked.

"It's not that I don't like you. I really like you, actually," I think he responded. "But you are such a good writer that you use it as a crutch to avoid the story. We get lost in the words because you are hiding in them and we spend the whole time searching for you, but you lead us nowhere." Or, you know, something like that.

We continued to not get along, but it wasn't as tense. The class ended, I focused my prose work on classes like ecopsychology, anarchy & Nietzche, and fiction workshops where my writing was awful but I so adored the messy and kind professor as I struggled along and learned how to invent. I'd had enough bad or combative teachers that this one poor relationship didn't shift me from writing, but it did blockade me from his point.

I did need to make something happen in my writing.

Twelve years later, I re-approached the topic and wrote City of a Different Sunlight, which was published in Panorama: the Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature and nominated for a Pushcart.

By that point, I'd put myself through grad school, had distance, had life, had perspective, had bravery — though it took me a few more years to actually share the story around, I was still brave enough to write it. I'd been writing professionally by that point and had edited a full length historical fiction novel. The editors at Panorama, including my former mentor Amy Gigi Alexander, coaxed the parts of the story out of me I didn't want to be relevant.

Had he just been a bit more kind, it wouldn't have taken me have a lifetime to truly absorb, appreciate, and implement his feedback.

I'll be honest: there are still parts of storytelling that hold me up when it comes to my own writing: why is that necessary, who cares about my tragedy, who would want to hear me whine? These echoes of doubt haven't come from writing instructors, but from those characters in the story of my life who have the most to lose from me telling my side of the tale. And I think sometimes those characters are me.

A mechanical keyboard won't blow up on you (probably)

I no longer have a draft of that first version I wrote when I was 19. My computer blew up on me not too long after and I lost everything — including feeling in my right leg for a good ten years. I still think about Mark and his wayward advice — he also died years ago, which is tragic. I'll say it, I don't think he was a great instructor, but he did give me an incredible backhanded insult that anchors all my writing.

A more helpful feedback approach to consider:

As you're writing or revising, ask yourself: The language may beautiful but why are you writing? What is the story you are really trying to tell your readers?

If it's a story about how you lived, take them on the journey of how you almost died. That way, the butterfly you smash into will be the same agony, the fog the same divinity.

Want help bringing purpose, action, and lyrical language to your writing? Find a time on my calendar for a free discovery call to discuss your goals. Only one client has every cried during our time together, and they were tears of appreciation 😉

MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS DANCE