The Chef the Civilian and the Bald Bird

The Chef, the Civilian, and the Bald Bird

This essay is a reflection on feedback dynamics, not a judgment on peers’ skill. By ‘civilian,’ I mean readers who are not writers—people who engage with stories intuitively rather than technically.

How do you find like-minded writers to form a group or become beta readers? And what really happens when you share your work before publication?

I don’t belong to a writers’ group, and I’m particular about who I ask for feedback—writers or civilians. I treat feedback on a short story differently from feedback on a novel, because those forms require different muscles. A sprinter and a marathoner both run, but you wouldn’t train them the same way.

Writers think of feedback as a technical matter—developmental editing, line editing, all the gears in the engine. Do the moving parts mesh? Is the balance between exposition and dialogue working? Is there flow? Subtext? Too many information dumps? Very nerdy. Very necessary. But also not the whole story.

Let’s bring this down to the psychological level. When you ask someone for feedback, you’re not just asking for help—you’re asking for an opinion. And in the real world, an opinion is almost always a zero-sum proposition: take it or leave it. Feedback becomes a kind of transaction, and transactional exchanges are rarely honest; both sides are negotiating what they’re willing to say and what they’re willing to hear. The only real, unguarded transaction in fiction is between the author and the reader—and during that exchange, the author is absent. The work is the evidence. It stands alone.

Think of it like eating a dish. A diner takes a bite, enjoys it, and says, “This tastes good.” A chef sees technique, structure, timing—what’s balanced, what’s off, where the seasoning was too much or not enough. They’re not a civilian. They’re wired differently.

And yes, this may be why some professors write novels with brilliant ideas but lifeless execution: they know the anatomy, but they forget the heart. A writer speaks in the vocabulary another writer understands, which can be good—or distracting. Writers tend to offer solutions based on how they would write it. Civilians often can’t offer solutions at all. One group risks ego; the other risks vagueness. Both can misread intention.

Feedback from a reader is a response, but response isn’t the same as analysis. Analysis dismantles the thing. Constructive feedback tries to rebuild it. Both writer and civilian struggle for the same reason: empathy—being able to see what the work is aiming for, not what they’d cook up themselves. And even then, no two readers taste the same dish the same way. A writer can season with intention, but once the plate leaves the kitchen, the flavor belongs to the diner. Forget that, and every exchange becomes a negotiation instead of a conversation.

So I say this: don’t sit at the head of the table. The head of the table signals hierarchy: I am the Author, and you are the Reader. Tell me what I want to hear. It limits the flow of information to one direction. But when you sit in the middle of the table, metaphorically speaking, you acknowledge your own bias. You’re saying: The work must speak for me, and I am here to listen to what the evidence actually shows, not what I wish it did. Humility shifts the exchange from transactional to truthful.

Humility sharpens hearing. Perfectionism muddies it. If you pluck every feather for the sake of technical purity, you end up with a bald bird—soulless or, worse, tasteless. Precision is good; perfectonism is not.

This is why I rarely ask fellow authors to read my novels unless there’s a sensitive issue. Eyes of Deceit required insight into aspects of Judaism outside my experience. Hush Hush tackled racism and specific language. That’s when I need someone with expertise, not another novelist competing with my sentences.

What I will ask a novelist is whether the first few pages work. Those pages are the handshake with the reader. The first impression. The point where the evidence first speaks.

Short stories are different. Many novelists don’t write them well; the compression throws them. Civilians, on the other hand, can be excellent short-story readers. It’s a smaller time commitment, and they respond instinctively—no goggles o craft, no competitive baggage. They tell you what landed.

In the end, there’s no perfect beta reader, no ideal writers’ group, no universal process. Every writer and reader experiences feedback differently. This is simply one perspective on how to listen to the work itself. In my view, there’s only the work, the evidence it presents, and the humility it takes to hear it truthfully—choose your readers as a chef chooses ingredients, with care, intention, and a willingness to taste what’s actually on the plate.