Become a Better Writer: Join the Steemit Impact Feedback Group!
Steemit Impact Feedback is a teacherless writing group I’m now starting with the goal to help other Steemians (and myself) become better writers.
Writing is central to a content platform like Steemit. Most value here is produced with text content, be it posts or comments. The more users that come, the higher the stakes in creating quality content that is worth the reward.
To really help one become a better writer, genuine feedback is needed—indeed, a special kind of feedback, given in a criticism-free, advice-free manner, just showing how the text was perceived and experienced by the reader.
The project’s audience is aspiring authors wishing to become established bloggers on social networks like Steemit or Medium, journalists, writers, poets, and book authors.
The goal of a Writing Feedback Group is to help its members produce better texts and better evaluate their own work. It’s attained with mutual feedback and writing exercises. Instead of the usually given advice or opinions, the members share their perceptions of a text, i.e., the feelings and thoughts they experience when reading the text, helping the author figure out how the text works.
This work is done by members for members. The group’s facilitator provides feedback on other members’ feedback quality.
What You Get
- You’ll learn how your texts are perceived by other people using feedback from group members.
- You’ll write faster, more easily, and with better results by doing writing exercises (not obligatory).
- You’ll connect with real people on Steemit, make friends, and expand your network.
What You Give
- Be polite and treat group members with full attention, respect, and empathy.
- Share with the group one text per week.
- Give feedback on every text of other group members.
The participation is free of charge. This is my gift to Steemit members who are interested in quality writing.
Group Rules
- A group can include up to 7 members (supposing that giving feedback to seven people a week is doable), so don’t miss the opportunity to join the first group which is being recruited right now (see the details below).
- Each member can offer to the group one text of any genre per week (200 to 2000 words long).
- Each member fully reads each text posted in the group and gives feedback on it.
- Members commit to participate in the group for four weeks.
Membership Requirements
- Minimal Steemit reputation 45
- Minimum ten posts longer than 200 words already published
- Minimum Level B2 English
- Manual approval by the group facilitator
Currently the first group, Impact Feedback Alpha, is being recruited. You can apply for membership on the Impact Feedback Channel, especially if you want to ask questions and get to know other members; or, if you’re shy or aren’t acquainted with how Discord works, apply directly on the Impact Feedback website.
You're also Invited to Join The New Isle of Write Discord Server!
Interested in a relaxed place to learn new things or just kick back and chill with other writers and creative types? Check out The Isle of Write!
Under the "Workshop Waters" category are all of the places you can go to both give and receive help, advice, feedback, and inspiration. The workshops are intended for material that hasn’t yet been posted on Steemit, so please share links to your drafts made in Google Docs with comments enabled in sharing settings.
Workshops available on The Isle of Write server include:
- comic-cave (graphics and text combine...and now we have a cave)
- english-grammar-grove (for proofreading help)
- fiction-fjord (fiction pieces only)
- free-writing-retreat (for @mariannewest 's Five Minute Freewriting group, open to all)
- impact-feedback (for @vitkolesnik's project focused on emotional impact in writing)
- nonfiction-fun (for blogs, rants, how-tos, etc)
- off-steemit-ocean (for writing outside of the Steemit platform)
- poetry-pond (to share and give feedback on poetry of all kinds)
- scripting-springs (for stage, screen, or audio scriptwriting)
- songwriters-sounding (for lyrical artists)
- visual-art-vistas (for anything from photography to sculpture)
Check out The Isle of Write’s introduction post for more details!
Supported by Whaleshares
Whaleshares is a community of creative Steemians founded by @officialfuzzy. The vision of Whaleshares community and BeyondBitcoin Hangout Series is to give people a voice to speak about their favorite projects in the blockchain tech space. We need to enable more people and incentivize more crypto savvy content creators to be part of the community, help build and benefit from in a synergistic union. Join the community Discord server offering many channels from general talk to post promotion to contests!
Credits
- Many thanks to Isle of Write community for the invaluable support with special thanks to @lenadr and @jrhughes!
- Hats off to Whaleshares community with special thanks to @steempowerpics for the support!
- Front picture by Robert Collins
Related Posts
So head over to the Impact Feedback Discord Channel or apply directly on the Impact Feedback website and let the journey begin!
If you like this project and wish to support it, please upvote and resteem this post!
While i applaud the vision. It is far more dedication than i could give to a project at this moment in time. A pity, as i think that it is a great idea and a brilliant way to write more quality content. Maybe in the future i will have the chance to partake in something this useful.
Looking forward to it!
We're incredibly happy to see this project get under way. Best of luck!
The same here! 😃
Sorry we haven't been in contact recently. This looks awesome and looks like a great project!
Thanks, DM me on discord if you're interested.
Awesome to see this starting up @vitkolesnik :D I'm excited to see how it works!
Keep up the great work! 😃
I'm excited to apply @vitkolesnik! This should be fun. 😃
Great, you're more than welcome @geke! :)
Slightly related: I consider starting to post some writings but afraid I wouldn't get enough feedback because I have no time to join communities and read others' stuff etc
Do you think it's still worth it?
It's hard to succeed on Steemit without joining communities :)
Sounds like an interesting concept. I have noticed that people become offended, defensive, or completely miss the point of traditional workshops.
Yeah. We would like someone to tell us objectively the truth about our writing so that we could correct and conform, but the truth is no one knows nothing and we are to find it out on our own.
When I workshop someone I give an honest reaction. Often people will tell me they disagree with me. To me that says they've missed the point. I'm not arguing or suggesting what they should do, I'm giving them an honest reaction. Honest reactions are fairly easy to give, you just describe your personal reaction.
They can sting, no doubt. But they are important. If someone is serious about their work, then they too will find these reactions to be important because some of their audience will feel the same way.
I am interested to see your methodology though.
Maybe it's about wording. When wording is right, there's no need to agree or disagree.
it can definitely soften the blow. If I'm reading over a story and after a certain line of dialogue I think "Wow, the protagonist is a jerk." When and if that is contrary to what the author would want the reader to think, then it would help the author to know exactly that, wouldn't it?
This is about wording exactly. What you can say safely always relates to yourself, not the others. Here's an example: "When I am reading how this guy behaves, I feel resentment".
So the idea is a more diplomatic approach to giving feedback, and also to focus the feedback on exactly how it makes you feel?
If we focus the feedback on exactly how it makes us feel it will be more diplomatic. There are more ideas than that but it's a good basis. It's Thomas Gordon's approach (the author of P.E.T.). Also Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg is a good book on the subject.
This project is not for me. It does not jive well with my personality.
It's not in spite of the above, but because of it, that I know just how valuable this service, this activity, will be.
Good luck to the project, and wishes of growth to all those who participate, and then those who benefit from those who have, in ever growing circles :)
Thanks man. I appreciate that.
Dear @vitkolesnik,
I hope to be in the position to join your Impact Feedback group in the near future. I am a strong proponent of participation in authentic feedback loops for the creative, learning, and design processes. Congratulations on building such a worthwhile endeavor!