The Book He Wasn't Supposed to Write | Hacker News Reader

The Book He Wasn't Supposed to Write

theatlantic.com

114 pointssmacktoward27 comments

I had a similar experience, which was more concise and, for me personally, more transformative.

My career as an architect had reached a point where I knew it wasn't going to satisfy my life goals. I needed to understand more about finance, innovation theory, management, etc. I needed an MBA -- not a bullshit one for the title, but to actually learn things. I decided I'd go to Oxford.

This was going to be challenging: I had neither the funds to pay for it nor the shiniest academic record. Good GMAT scores, but not much else. The admissions essay had to be a knock-out.

So I wrote something I thought was amazing, and was preparing to submit it, when I realised: wait a second, I need some more eyeballs on this.

I looked around the coffeehouse where I sat. There was a guy there -- I wasn't sure of his name, but he was a regular. A philosophy student (part time? dropout?) of uncertain provenance. We'd had a few conversations occasionally, and he seemed bright. So I asked him, somewhat rhetorically, whether he had the time to read 4 pages and give me his feedback. He happily agreed...

...and he hated it. Tore into almost every part of it. Didn't remotely grok the point I was trying to make. Made it clear that the essay failed on pretty much every level.

That was unpleasant to hear, but he was right. What mattered wasn't _my_ impression of what I'd done -- it was how it impressed other people. So I rewrote the essay from the ground up, keeping his criticism at the forefront of my mind.

Oxford ended up giving me the largest scholarship they had. Afterwards I stayed in the UK and built a life there.

Don't even know that guy's name, but damn am I glad he was that asshole.

Nicely done on accepting the criticism! I would hope I could do the same.

> “Sometimes my job is to be an asshole,” he explained...

It's so difficult to give frank, negative feedback without coming across as an asshole but, sometimes, it's necessary.

"Constructive" feedback only goes so far. Sometimes people need to be told that their work is bad, so that they can improve. Accepting mediocrity in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings is doing them a disservice in the long run.

Assholes don't write a 10-pages letter to help you do your job. They especially do not help you do your job.

Scott is unlikely to be an asshole. His, was a friendly comment. From what the author wrote, the comments allowed him to ponder and make the manuscript better. So constructive criticism does work.

Yes, this is key. "Assholes" don't give constructive feedback and try to make things better. They drop "witty" one-liners, hot takes, and move along to posture for a new audience or ruin someone else's day.

Of course, delivering bad news is hard. Most people are awful at it. Most people don't really want it. They want a pat on the head and get told their work is near-perfect.

I advise on a few startups and mentor at Techstars Austin. When a company asks me to watch their pitch, I ask them: "Do you want honest feedback no matter what or just a thumbs up? I'm happy to do the first but I won't do the second."

The relationships that come through honest, constructive collaboration are the best part of mentoring.

Yes but it is damn hard to tell someone that a book has fundamental flaws. A big part of editorial is also emotional support and faith. So the editor must have dug very deep to be able to actually tell him you have to go back to the foundations. It would have been much much easier to say "it needs this or that series of changes" hoping it would be enough and avoid the more emotionally difficult task of saying "this does not work at all in its current form".

So it may help to have an inner asshole when doing this.

Yes, it is hard to decide to give strong negative feedback. But an editor will generally do it anyway, because they are being paid by the publisher, and so their job is to make the book a success.

You can constructively tell someone their work is not up to the standard required, and not accept mediocrity. You don't have to be rude or uncivil to do that.

Yes and many times the recipients of that message do not seem to either internalize it or act upon it.

There seems to be a need to for continual escalation of feedback until it is processed. Often times this processing doesn't occur until they are uncomfortable, or as in the case of family, tired of listening to you!

> Yes and many times the recipients of that message do not seem to either internalize it or act upon it.

Then phrase it another way until they do, or otherwise find a way to communicate it that makes the issue clear. That's still not a reason to become hostile or toxic, or berate or denigrate someone.

And bringing things back to the article we're commenting on, here: it doesn't actually look like that happened at any point here. Despite how the person in question self-described themselves, it doesn't seem to me that they actually behaved in a problematic way. It's perfectly reasonable to offer precise, to-the-point, clear criticism. None of that requires being rude, uncivil, or unconstructive.

The comment I was replying to said '"Constructive" feedback only goes so far.'. I emphatically disagree; the article talks about a ten-page letter full of what sounds like highly constructive feedback.

To do that, you must know what the standard required is.

Right. The key thing is to make it clear that you think the person is capable of doing better. Harsh, negative feedback like we see on the the internet all the time, attacks the person, not just their view. The message is "you are an idiot," rather than, "I think you are wrong on this, but smart enough to correct your view once you hear my argument"

I get your point here. It's important not to hold back and to be "honest". Being nice doesn't make the work better.

I have met some people who take this as a license to not think as hard about how to formulate their feedback. So it comes out as harsh and personal, even if the kernel of feedback is valuable.

Almost every "angry" feedback I've seen on the internet could have been rewritten to simply be good feedback. If you have the time to write and rewrite feedback, you can probably clean up arguments much faster. Taking a chill pill if you will.

This is harder to do in face-to-face conversations, though.

This is a great article for those unfamiliar with publishing, but rather sparse on any interesting material for anyone with a basic knowledge as to how it works. To be honest the most surprising thing in this piece is the fact that the author didn't have this experience until his sixth book--you mean to tell me this guy wrote five books without ever having to do a major revamp--without ever running into the knowledge that each book often brings mental collapse, incredible stress, and emotive highs and lows with it? I'm not sure whether I should be impressed or disillusioned.

My impression is that this is mostly a publicity feature for the book and the author than anything else...

More like an extended public thank you to his editor. Not that that's a bad thing.

I was looking for "Hijinks". I found an editor doing his job.

I know some authors and some agents. No editors. But the authors and agents tell me that it's rare for editors actually to do what we usually call "editing." It's more about selection and promotion, a lot of the time. So I read this and was actually pleasantly surprised to see that an author got that kind of attention from a professional. An unpublished author would have gotten, most likely, a two-sentence rejection note.

Nonfiction author here.

It seems like the fact that he didn't encounter this sort of thing until his sixth book ended up making this a lot more stressful than it needed to be, and a lot more work for both him and his editor.

Because he had such a strong relationship with the editor, he likely did not have to write a detailed book proposal, in which some of the structural issues might have come up. The editor seems to have heard a general pitch -- "dual biography of Churchill and Orwell, with a focus on how they each, in their own way, fought against totalitarianism" -- and agreed to get on board on the strength and quality of their previous collaborations.

And then Ricks had the liberty of working on the book for _three years_ before dumping the completed manuscript on the editor.

Both the writer and the editor share some blame for the fallout from that. As Ricks says, this was not a rushed job. You would think that over the course of those three years, there would have been communication between writer and editor on how the book was shaping up.

With journalism and nonfiction writing in general, you sometimes don't have the ability to predict at the start how things will come together structurally until you've done all your research and reporting. Sometimes you have to change directions. But it seems like those profound structural issues could nevertheless have been caught at an earlier point in the process.

Refreshing to see narrative discussed as a tool to get a good story out, and to help an audience, rather than as a tool to bend an audience to a particular view.

So much has been written by and about Churchill that, short of some new revelations (like Magic), adding to the pile is hardly worth it.

If you want to learn about Orwell, read Orwell. He does write about himself occasionally, and rather critically.

Blocked behind a paywall if you have privacy add ons / tracking protection enabled.

I have just uBO and it worked for me.

Fine even with uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Perhaps they are only doing weird stuff for certain regions?

Interesting, uBO and Privacy Badger on Firefox here in Australia gives the paywall, as does 1Blocker on iOS (safari)

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