While in the Cleveland Heights Public Library, I picked up an edition of one of my favorite magazines: Writer’s Digest. I took it off the magazine rack, sat down and begin to leaf through its pages. I jumped from article to article until I ran across this headline: “7 myths about feedback.”

I found the title intriguing, and I took note of the author. The byline on the piece said “Joni B. Cole,” whose e-mail address at the end of it seemed to suggest that she was an alumna of Dartmouth University. Not that Cole’s educational background means much to me; it doesn’t. It was her thoughts about “feedback” that caught my attention.

For feedback is something I have long coveted during my writing career, but I have to admit that I’m an exception in that regard. The rule seems to be that writers hate to hear anything but compliments about their work, which is a pity. So much can come from honest, thoughtful critiques of our works, a point that Cole seemed to agree with me in her “seven myths.”

Those myths are worth discussing, even if not everybody will agree with them. Here they are, one point after another.

1.   Positive feedback is a waste of time: “Bring it on!” Just call this the “deficit model of feedback,” meaning to help a writer improve his work is to rip it to shreds. More useful, Cole says, is to focus on what part of the writing works and less on what part of it needs work. Positive feedback isn’t a feel-good experience necessarily but an opportunity to help a writer see his successes. Positive feedback leaves the writer motivated. What good is served to deconstruct a story and then leave it disassembled?

2.    Feedback will railroad your creative process: Remember, you have creative control over your work, not the person who offers the critique of it. Writing is a personal act, just as painting a picture or cutting your own hair is. In looking at the creative process, the only aspects of writing that can’t be dismissed are grammar, usage and accuracy in nonfiction.

3.    Writers should be silent during their story discussion: The best critique or review sessions are free-flowing discussions. They help the writer see his story through a different set of lens. Listen to the feedback and discuss it. Don’t try, however, to debate how someone else is seeing your work. Push for insight in the critique. Help others see the story the way you tried to see it. Don’t settle for platitudes; seek specifics.

4.    Writers are just looking for a little praise: Writers do want praise, but they know that encouragement is more valuable. They want critiques to clarify problems. Praise? Yeah, that’s nice, but for feedback to be useful it needs to offer more than praise. The question is simple: What works and what needs work?

5.    The goal of feedback is to help “fix” a story: “Fixing stories may be one goal of feedback, but it sure doesn’t make you want to race out and get some,” Cole says. I can’t argue with her here. Keep in mind that no one can really “fix” a writer’s story but the writer. For someone else to try is to take ownership of the work. That’s not the aim. Writing, as I mentioned, is a personal act, so don’t look at fixing the story as the goal. Instead, make helping to improve it the objective.

6.    The best feedback comes from professionals: Nonsense, and I learned this lesson early in my career. I was working for my college newspaper and had just written my first bylined story. I was rightly proud of it. I went home that night and asked my roommate if he had read it. He had, adding, “Every paragraph started the same way.” He was right, and he wasn’t a journalist or a writer. The point of my anecdote, just like the one Cole used in the Writer’s Digest article, is that wisdom cam come from a variety of place, so be open to listening.

7.    Real writers don’t need feedback: Every writer needs an editor or a sounding board for his prose. Heck, he needs both. As personal an act as writing is, it is also experimental. Experiments fail, and good editors and sounding boards help us overcome these failures and “write on.” Approach it properly,” Cole says of feedback, “”and it becomes an invaluable resource that can help you write more – and better.”

Obviously – or it should be obvious anyway – her comments weren’t directed specifically at sportswriters. They are an odd lot when it comes to accepting or asking for feedback, which might explain why so much of today’s sportswriting is ordinary. But if we can step away and understand what feedback is designed to do, everybody will benefit, including readers.