Becoming the falconer: productive feedback for the redrafting of creative writing

Within a wider neoliberal education system, time and space for redrafting creative writing are marginalised, with focus on the written product rather than the writing process. This precludes the development of young writers. As academics and creative writers working in university Schools of Education, we use inductive autoethnography to explore our memories of feedback on creative writing throughout our writing lives. The affective dimension of feedback, with readers having power over their writers, is emphasised. We identify how feedback can be unproductive and unempathetic, harming the writer. We also identify how feedback can be productive, nurturing the writer through the process towards an internal dialogue with their inner ideal reader – their ‘superaddressee.’ It is the internal dialogue with the superaddressee, who perfectly understands what the writer is communicating, that develops the writer over time, giving them control over the writing process and facilitating redrafting. We recommend the professional development of teachers to become self-reflexive readers, who plan focused writing assessments, and provide productive feedback as well as mentorship programmes in publishing to develop new writers. Future research should explore the psychoanalytic nature of the writer–reader relationship and what the facilitation of redrafting looks like in educational settings.