For a number of years I have gone on retreat with two of my writing friends to carve out space in our busy lives and create new material. Part of that process is to write in the mornings and then share our work in the afternoon, inviting comment and feedback. On the surface it sounds like a good idea. After all, we are all writers and they are putting their fresh new work out there as well. We understood each other and the rawness of the work.

The feedback was usually sensitive and, for the most part, we avoided re-writing each other’s work. But something else was at work for me and it took me a while to realise what it was. Hard to name. Hard to claim.

I needed to trust myself and believe in my own vision.

This was really driven home for me with a piece that my writer friends suggested needed some serious changes. It just didn’t work for them. However, for me, it felt complete. With some misgiving flavoured with a smidge of defiance, I made the radical (!) decision to ignore my friends. I simply polished it and sent it out to a literary magazine. Not only was it published but the editor wrote and told me it needed no changes whatsoever. She was thrilled with it. So was I!

That’s when it struck me. At these retreats, the feedback we gave each other really came from personal opinions. And we are each different writers. What was happening (for me at least) was dilution of my voice, my creative vision by their visions when I brought my work out too early. Instead finding my own way, I short-circuited my creative process by not trusting myself. Once I had their feedback I stopped exploring the story and assumed they had the answer. My stories had been feeling flat to me and no wonder. It was “writing by committee”.

I still go on retreat but I keep my writing to myself now until it’s polished, primped and primed, ready to go out in public. At that point, I’m clear on my story and what I want it to say. I’ve answered my own questions about the work. Feedback from a trusted source at this point feels qualitatively different. Its about logic flaws or where I appear to be in love with fancy metaphor. What the feedback doesn’t do is change my voice or the basic story.

I’ve also come to realise that much of that new work I created on retreat never came to anything. Some of it never should, of course. But there are other pieces that deserve more however the “juice” was gone. By bringing them out too early I no longer felt the need to write them. I often tell my writing clients and students not to talk about a story because it takes away that pressure to write it. I can bear witness to that truth.

So now I write with the door firmly closed. I highly recommend it to you as well.

Thanks, Stephen.