I've just given feedback on the first chapters of someone's manuscript for a second time, and I feel so guilty about it.
I try to be helpful, constructive, objective, appreciative, encouraging, and firm - yet sensitive. It's bloody exhausting.
Does anyone else feel this way? I think it's much easier for a reader who doesn't write to give feedback. Having just finished my first novel, and knowing only too well the blood, sweat and tears that went into it . . . I'm so conscious of what that body of work means to a writer and I find it nerve-wracking giving feedback - even though I want to!
I guess you don't really know if you have helped or given the writer a massive complex.
Arrrrrgh. That's all.
I do crits for a living...well, not really, but it is a big part of what I do as a writing teacher and editor. And I have the added burden of knowing that because of my background, writers take my notes very much to heart. And early drafts are like wet clay, so fingerprints tend to show.
The most useful guideline for an editor or critiquer, in my experience, is "Am I making it better, or just making it different?" Just because I wouldn't have written something in a particular way is no reason to criticize it; every writer has his/her own style.
But there are ways to actually make things better. Learning to write is like learning to walk: we all pass through certain milestones on the way there. Mastering the various sorts of POV for example: huge problem until one day, after half a million words or so, it's not. Or learning what to show and what to tell; or learning to trust readers' discernment instead of spoonfeeding them. Those are areas in which good crits help, by helping the writer herself to notice these things, showing why they're problematical and suggesting alternative ways of accomplishing one's goals. It's equally important to point out what
is working, so the writer can build on his strengths.
It helps that I'm a writer as well as an editor, and so have been on the receiving end of many critiques, not so much by betas, but by my various editors. Once I get over the disappointment of what's not in the critique ("This is a perfect book. Don't change a word!"), I feast on the actual suggestions. There is only so much the writer can see herself; for the stuff she can't see, good editors are priceless. In my experience, the best writers are eager and grateful for actionable critiques, because they care a lot more about the quality of the work than the stroking of their ego.
Despite my efforts to be supportive while still being honest, I know that sometimes feelings are bruised. Anyway, I've found a way to keep guilt at bay. I tell writers to accept only those suggestions that bring them closer to the book they envisioned writing, and to discard the rest. It might take a day or two of decompressing for them to make that determination; but bottom line, it's their book and they make the final call on how it should be written.
As for grading on the curve---i.e. cutting writers slack because they worked so hard on their stories---that does no one any favors. For me, taking a book seriously enough to critique it stringently is a sign of respect.