In its early stages, this piece felt almost like three distinct parts crammed together even though it isn’t long enough to support that. The most helpful feedback I received was to compare those sections to find out what was making them feel different from each other and then to try to bridge those those gaps until it was one continuous story. We realized some of the divide was coming from the fact that most of the interesting creative stylistic choices about grammar and style were concentrated in the middle of the piece; incorporating those throughout helped with cohesion. Now, those stylistic choices build throughout the piece until you get to the end which ends with a kind of standalone poem.

One suggestion that was made was to add more metaphors to the piece. I liked the idea but not the actual conception. When I added on, it made the main idea of the piece vaguer by drawing away from the hammering of the nail that I wanted present in the piece. Instead, I added questions to the end of each numbered paragraph to use the desired figurative language within my piece while still keeping a clear idea of the characterization and story of “you.”

After consulting with a member of the Writing Center, I made some specific changes to the dialogue in certain scenes of the screenplay. Having someone that I knew and respected tell me my dialogue, in certain scenes, didn’t sound natural made me go back and redo a lot of my wording. I made the dialogue sound more natural and even flowing. Having another respected peer read my script and give helpful feedback made for a much better work overall.

I found that for “forever summer,” feedback regarding the “how to wind me / back down to me” line was useful as it was initially “how to wind me / back to me.” The latter line made it slightly confusing to read as the next line mentions “summer’s wind,” which uses a different meaning and pronunciation of “wind.” Thus, I included “back down to me” as it makes the meaning and pronunciation of the first “wind” clear. All in all, my feedback for “forever summer” has helped me approach punctuation and flow differently, providing me with new means to improve both.

The feedback I received gave me a lot of insight into how others read and interpreted my words. I was able to see patterns in my poem that I could improve upon. I have been going to Writers Guild for quite a few months and, just based on the feedback that has been given to other people, I’ve learned so much about how I can be a better writer. Getting feedback from a larger group made it helpful to know what things worked for some people and not for others.

One thing that was only lightly touched on in my original version was this concept of the North Side versus the South Side. Cats on the North Side are well off, chipped, and predominately pets while those on the South Side are nip addicts, tipped, and predominately strays. Further developing this dynamic gave rise to the inclusion of the ear-tipping and animal control within this piece as well as gave more allowance for building onto Meowington’s past that had also been lacking in my original piece.

The feedback I received on this piece was based on the stylistic components. This helped a bunch as sometimes I just have too much to say and can’t slow down to figure out if it all fits together. Due to the feedback, I was able to cut down on some unnecessary adverbs that I used as well as some words that came off as redundant. In the end, it helped with my rhythm and clarity throughout the piece by removing clunky structure and confusing sentences. I was able to finally hear some parts that may be muddled because I can stay stuck in my own perspective.

The specific feedback I received was to separate my two original writings. Together they didn’t work and the feedback to keep them as separate stand alone pieces proved to be correct. Originally, I had a preceding piece (Dogs Pt. I) which spoke to my love for my first dog. I expressed the friendship we shared and details of his last week which was the most significant death I had experienced up until that point in my life. But, it didn’t flow with (Part II). It was best to remove it and save for later.

The poem had a beginning that focused on the action but had a weird switch to second person at the end, but luckily my tutor had a really nice suggestion to add a section at the beginning that references said second person; it felt more cohesive and less abrupt making that switch to “but then you look up.” The specificity of her [the tutor’s] ideas and questions for “oh, could you find a word for this” really helped me focus in on the lines in the piece that I felt could be altered to strengthen the central message rather than take away from it. Going forward, I think taking into consideration the impact spacing can have is something useful.

I had a teacher once tell me “kill your darlings”—what she meant is that sometimes the parts of a piece I loved most needed to be cut altogether. The original title of this piece was “eyes like the weather” which has personal, sentimental value but as the piece grew, it didn’t hold the same weight. When the editors asked me to change the title, I thought about where the bulk of the inspiration from the piece came from, which was a conversation at a gas pump. After changing the title, I went through the different images and similes in the piece and recentered them around ~car~ things. I feel like it added theme, cohesion, and made the piece more clear.

[Writing Center tutor] suggested I use a repeating “the” at the beginning of a few lines, which I loved, and asked for clarification about the entrails line, which I now feel is more specific to what I am trying to convey. My word choice was the main thing I looked at for this piece. Honestly, I think it helped me get over my fear of showing others my writing. I rarely share things like this, so it feels vulnerable and real to put these works into publication; to have poetry that details such intimate feelings in a magazine is scary! I am glad I submitted it, this has helped me grow as a writer and reflect on why I write.

A big part of my writing process was not just finding rhyme but finding the rhyme that rang true to my experience. My favorite thing to do when writing a rhyming poem is to find one word I know I want in my poem, and then write a list of all the words that rhyme with it. I go through and cross them off as I write so I don’t accidentally reuse them. There was no set meter for this piece, but I wanted it to feel like it was speeding up as it went so if words or phrases were too clunky or awkward; they were cut, rephrased, or condensed.

The most useful feedback I got was about [the] lines: “I want to make this movie and be the damn director, / I’ll be the costume designer too.” [The feedback] made me focus on how the rhythm of the poem impacts how I will be able to deliver it. I realized that I didn’t want to change anything about the piece as I had edited it several times alone too. This feedback made me feel confident in my word choices, my line breaks, and the overall flow of my poem. This is a real struggle for me, so I really appreciated this feedback and it allowed me to be really happy with the piece as it is now.

The piece is surrealist fiction, and there is a recurring theme of the narrator character looking at people and not being able to recognize their whole face. She looks at people and “catches an eye, an upper lip, maybe a smile line, but the whole picture never comes together.” In my original ending, the narrator looks at her mother and recognizes her whole face. Someone asked me what I’d think about carrying the facial blindness through to the end rather than neatly resolving that tension. This helped me think deeply about what my point was. It’s creative fiction writing so it doesn’t have a thesis or argument in the academic sense, but I do have a core idea/theme.

During the revision process conversation was sparked around grammar, mostly comma splices. I want the youth who are learning to read to understand that commas are kind of a style choice though I don’t want the speakers reading the books to be so bogged down by the marked breath of commas to not find their own cadence and flow when reading the book. Maria’s [The Orange Couch editor for Issue 4] comments pieced together some long withstanding grammatical errors that I have purposely ruined to a standard that is actually legible.

For this piece, I wanted to make sure the imagery was cohesive and made sense. Olivia [Writing Center tutor] gave positive feedback for this piece, which improved my confidence in my writing. I think it is always helpful to get a healthy mix of positive and constructive feedback on what is working and what isn’t for each piece. Olivia suggested I shift my language in the third stanza to convey better what I meant by “profile.” Originally, I included the word “silhouette,” but I think the revision helped clarify my meaning to ensure a smooth line. By removing the word “silhouette,” the line became more distinct.

Brady [Writing Center tutor] and I discussed a lot of things regarding the second stanza of this piece. The poem naturally trails into a more philosophical realm during this stanza, and I received help in how to effectively convey what the point of the poem is. Sometimes this, as in prior pieces, included the bolstering of ambiguity that works but more often in the addition of concrete non-abstract imagery to ground the reader. What inspired me philosophically to write this poem is my belief in the interconnectedness of nature; that every living thing is kindred on some fundamental level.

I struggled a little with tense so Nikita [a tutor] at the Writing Center helped point me to some recourses online and also highlight areas with inconsistent tense. She also suggested writing the whole story in the present tense so it’s more engaging to the reader. I reviewed all her markups on tense and updated the main story to present tense. I kept [a few] past tense sentences just because they make more sense that way. Nikita also pointed out to me that my dialogue and thoughts could be more clear. I went through her markup and updated all thoughts to be italics and added “I thought” at the end to distinguish them.

Feedback I received revolved around syntax and word choices—adjusting words and phrases that could help move the piece in a way that felt more natural. I struggled with finding a way to end the piece in a cohesive yet impactful way, but I got some really helpful feedback that suggested I circle back to the main idea and mention this “powdered sugar face.” Changing the words to “well-lived” and “well-loved” made the piece flow in a way that ends in a great place. This feedback really made such a difference in my own perceptions of the piece, and I’m extremely grateful the collaborative efforts really got to give this poem a life of its own!

One person [at Writers Guild] said that the ending was a little “over-explainy.” I bore [this] in mind as I made my revisions, but I didn’t make any drastic changes because I feel like it works well. They said conveying the message of this piece through action could be more effective. So this time around, I focused on making the plot of this piece unique to one particular evening. Before, I had posed the situation I was in as generalizable to all the times my grandparents took us to Toby’s.

Brady [Writing Center tutor] assisted me specifically with the line length and flow of this poem. I noted that near the end of the poem, the lines stretch out and were aesthetically unpleasing and did not aid in the function of the piece. Brady helped me tighten up verses, and mostly near the end of the poem, I was assisted in adding in some extra line breaks. The feedback that Brady gave me that was most helpful was advice on where to add line breaks. The poem was much less polished than it appears here; this is owed to line breaks in the somewhat free verse form of the piece.

I thought Olivia’s [Writing Center tutor] suggestion to elaborate on what a “confident creature” meant was genius. I implemented a few more lines and specificity to really hone in on the feeling of being a confident creature and what that would look like. I gave every bit its own line, which I think improved the clarity a ton. I wanted to use the word “creature” because it adds an element of mystery and discovery to this new version of myself. “Creature” speaks to the in-humanness I feel toward that distant part of myself; it is a protection from becoming too vulnerable and places an emphasis on the alien-ness of feeling confident.

I found the feedback regarding the perceived meaning of the poem very helpful as not only did I struggle to find the right way to communicate what I was trying to, but it is also hard to gauge whether or not someone else will see it that way. One stanza that prompted a different meaning than what I intended was “as I gave this a try.” I hadn’t made it clear that the “try” this one is about hadn’t been one of the “past plights,” which made it seem like it was. Ultimately, knowing which certain lines made my message unclear was very useful and allowed me to focus specifically on sections that needed rewording.

Brady [Writing Center tutor] helped me cement the ambiguity of this piece into concrete, sensory imagery. His interpretations and comments on the meaning of my poem helped me to understand where to keep ambiguity and where to aid the reader with more obvious, concrete images. In the original draft, the “eddying winds” were not specifically autumn winds, and the “fronds” were not specifically sere. I added these details to signify that the poem, fundamentally, is about the season of fall and the death that it presages. The added details aid in the atmosphere of the poem, and these suggestions helped me ground the reader with images and sensory experiences.

I received feedback that the clarity of the piece fell off when I started to introduce new “characters.” The language surprised me because in the piece I talk about my Dad and my Grandma, but it’s true, to the reader they are characters. I realized I needed to expand on the “where” and “who” in the second half of the piece to make the images and experience more clear. I added a line about “unfamiliar rooms” and tied in “corners” to the musical event to give a stronger sense of space. The new capitalization of “We” signifies the royal, familial “We,” as we hold cautious hope for the future of our family, even though it looks different than we expected.

I ended up revising the story to reflect more on my relationship with my mom as well as this specific memory; I hinted at it in the original but held back as this was one of the first times I tried describing our relationship. I ended up including the second section from a different project to help elaborate a bit more on the importance of this moment and, in a way, my mom. The last big change was switching the order of the two main sections as they were originally the other way around. After making that change, the narrative flows better and aids in conveying the complexity of a strained relationship with one’s parent.

I received such great feedback on how to keep the integrity of the syntax in the poem by letting go of some more florid phrases in the original draft. Since this poem is a terza rima, any editing and word changes at the end of a line can mean having to reverse engineer the poem to clean it up. The feedback as a whole never changed the narrative of the poem, but many words were changed. In the first stanza instead of “lanes,” I originally used “streets.” Changing this singular word meant altering the whole poem sonically (the rhymes and sounds would now have to be different), but the narrative functions the same as it would have stayed as “streets.”

I received feedback about the clarity and content of my poem. [Writing Center tutor] suggested altering the eight line of the poem to make it clearer I was referring to the “alcoves of my heart,” which I did by calling it a “hollow nook.” In the final stanza, I originally had a line reading, “i cannot keep my contempt for the trees, fog and rain any longer.” My [tutor] wrote how the first stanza does not seem contemptuous. Her suggestions were to add more negative adjective to the first stanza, or rework that line. I reworked it into “is this a tranquil delusion, or is it hope? / i cannot keep asking the asking the trees, fog, and rain.”

It was helpful to have someone who had not seen my poem and to give me an honest opinion and to take my hands from the wheel to make sure that it applied to a wider audience. I had been looking at it in a humorous sense rather than wanting to stretch the depth that the poem could reach. There have been several iterations of this piece, but the last line (now non-existent for clarity) has changed shape the most. It previously read, “This is overwhelming, and you have transformed me into flat, burnt crisps, singed by your desire.” It took away from the simplicity of the piece. Ending with “(for cookies)” opens it up to more interpretation.

What really wowed me was how [the Writing Center tutor’s] comments didn’t try to offer suggestions or point out problems. She tried to describe how things affected her as a reader and why—what aspects of the writing and the structure resulted in those effects. This took my literacy narrative and the feedback I’d received on it firmly out of “working on this draft” into “understanding and evolving as a writer” territory. This was a major creative risk, a big undertaking, something that I felt resonated with the core of my writer identity and was a big step toward really having my own writerly voice.

The most helpful piece of feedback for this particular piece was [the comment] that each stanza evoked images. This piece was inspired by an image I had of my mother when I was an infant. I wanted to shape a picture with as few words as I could. The tone from the beginning is somber, melancholic. “Broken Whistle” [and]”Empty Vessel” were phrases [that] sprung to mind when I imagined someone who is emotionally shattered. I felt that deep unspoken sadness a mother carries and decided to reflect on that. I personally liked the last stanza; I thought it captured what I wanted to express in the poem about a woman looking back on her life choices and regrets.

The most useful feedback I received during this process primarily concerned the rhythmic and musicality of words committed to the page. In poems of mine in the past, I have sometimes struggled to condense my writing into a more consolidated meter; whereas, in this piece there was more emphasis placed on that structurally, which was a valuable area for me to receive feedback on. Feedback was instrumental particularly in the way it helped me either clarify what is meant in the word choice I used regarding the imagery of the piece and forced me to justify the absolute necessity of each word, both in rhythm and content.

For structure, the comment was on variation in the length of the stanzas— from one line to two to three—to give engaging texture to the poem. Considering this, I changed the structure to make it look more mirrored. By which I mean the layout of the stanzas below earlier was 2,3,1,2,2,3,2,2 whereas they were rearranged to 2,3,2,1,2,3,2. This format helped emphasize an important idea in the middle, and even at the end. This kind of structuring was new to me and going forward it will help me with the flow of the poem.

The feedback was mostly helpful in showing me how I needed to separate certain sections of my work so it all flowed a little smoother. That and how certain vocabulary was either too rigged or too snooty for talking about nature. The feedback that was most helpful and most transferable was considering the type of language that’s used throughout a piece of writing and making sure the grammar is fluid. What seems important for now is ensuring a consistent and smooth language style is employed throughout a piece and all grammar stays in check.

[For] this poem she [the Writing Center tutor] mentioned to specify the train; add a description to the train or mention if it was a Metro or Amtrak. I am from Cincinnati, Ohio, and there is a train near my house. It blows its horn at night, but it’s a much different train than the Metro system here in Chicago. They have different sounds. Chicago is a noisy city. I live on the outskirts of Cincinnati, so it’s quiet and smaller. I like the unspecificity of the train because no matter where you are, if there is a train near you, you can imagine yourself listening to the train and feeling lost in time.

Lauren [Writing Center tutor] was very kind and I appreciated her giving me feedback on my poems. I only changed one thing, which was taking out the “we are the poets…” to “we are poets.” I feel like that small detail makes a difference. She also mentioned to go into further detail with describing how the ocean reflects dreamers’ thoughts and why the sky is their savior. I personally like the unspecificity of why. I think it allows for people who consider themselves dreamers to reflect on moments when they zone out or think deeply. For me, I think a lot when I am in nature. It’s also in nature that I find my creativity the most and inspiration.