So great.

It’s like doing a group essay or report at uni, you split the parts up between everybody but in order to get good results it has to read like one person wrote it. That requires constructive criticism, but people are often far too touchy about their egos to consider the true meaning of the end result. I always try to stress that emotion should be taken out of the equation for university essays/reports. Otherwise you churn out crap.

So well done on learning a valuable lesson here. It’s the hard ones that give the best results. I may check out Mess+Noise too!

Like the second review. I’m always getting told my reviews are too technical etc, probably because I studied production and don’t really listen to words so I know how you feel!

Appreciating music comes so naturally that I often assume reviewing it will be just as easy but I’m often re-drafting and re-considering the way it’s written.

That said, I think it’s far more acceptable to do “track by track” reviews of EPs since there’s not many tracks and it’s rarely compiled as an album would be, but hey, I love Mess + Noise so I’m willing to listen to Darren.

Nice one buddy. Look forward to more.

M

Since then I’ve done thousands of re-writes here at work. It’s helped. It really has.

I still do re-writes every week. Usually it’s tweaks. Occasionally, something is completely off-base. But it’s a rare day to not have to change anything at all.

My experience has given me the belief that editing is s something that a writer should not simply accept reluctantly — although I completely understand the ego-impact of “shit can’t I ever get anything right the first time?!” — but actively welcome.

We learn the craft of words through the act of writing, but we also learn from others’ ideas and feedback.

Others write differently from me. They think differently from me. Others help me be a writer in a way that I couldn’t be by myself. Sometimes that’s a better writer. Sometimes it’s merely a different one. But I think it’s inescapably to the good.

One of my great disappointments with Fasterlouder and Rave has always been lack of feedback. I joined FL in search of it; I don’t think I’ve ever received anything more than the most general “it’s good stuff”. There just doesn’t seem to be a culture for it, and that’s kinda sad, because I think that other’s input could help me (and other writers) improve more.

If you want some inexpert expert advice based on that initial draft: your adverbs are creating fat in the article. Lose them where you can; use them sparingly. A good friend who used to work in a New York paper gave me that advice several years ago. It helped tighten my writing a great deal.

I also like that second version much more. The first version ok. But the second is tauter, and it tells me an story that piques my interest. This is crucial because, frankly, I don’t give a flying damn about the lyrical content and meaning in music — I just want the sound.

And before you go beating yourself with the I’m useless stick — some days the output is just average for whatever reason. You accept it and move on, because next time you just might create a pearler.