A peer review can be just as rewarding for the reviewer as it is for the recipient. As Amelia Protas, Best Peer Review winner for our Food Writing Competition, says, “A peer review is that much more rewarding when you know your feedback is helping a writer improve a piece that means a lot to them. For this reason, I often try to review as many pieces as I can for Write the World competitions.”
We talk to Amelia about her tips for other peer reviewers, the importance of asking questions as a peer reviewer, her writing goals, and more!
How did you go about choosing which Food Writing entry to review?
The competition had just opened up, and I was looking through the published pieces, looking at how different people were choosing to write about food. BillyJoeBobTheThird’s piece was one of the first ones published, and it caught my eye. I opened it up, and read the whole thing with my eyes glued to the screen. As soon as I finished, I started to review the piece. It was already wonderful, and just needed a little bit of polishing, so I tried to help with that. I know how useful a review can be when you’re entering the competition, so I tried to make my review helpful and insightful.
Guest judge Andrea Nguyen praised your use of in-line questions for providing suggestions for how the author might strengthen the piece. What advice do you have for other peer reviewers who want to ask questions that will help writers?
I think questions are one of the most helpful tools when writing a peer review. It’s a good way to give suggestions without making it seem like the writer must make that change. You have to remember when you’re writing a peer review that you’re simply giving feedback to another writer, not making direct changes yourself. Asking questions is a good way to get the writer thinking without pressuring them into making a certain edit. I often start my suggestions with the word “maybe”; it’s a good way to make a suggestion, while still leaving the writer control over the piece.
What is the most rewarding part of providing a peer review?
It’s very rewarding for me to review a piece that means a lot to a writer. I’ll often stumble upon pieces that the author is submitting to a writing competition, or something that they’re writing for a school paper, or even just a piece that they worked really hard on. Whenever I see these pieces, I always try to review them. A peer review is that much more rewarding when you know your feedback is helping a writer improve a piece that means a lot to them. For this reason, I often try to review as many pieces as I can for Write the World competitions. Those reviews can really help shape your piece, whether that’s by providing smaller edits, like I did for BillyJoeBobTheThird, or helping a writer find the main idea of their entry.
We’re almost halfway through 2021! What are your writing goals for the rest of the year?
I really want to work on a longer story. I’ve never been great at finishing a long writing project, and that’s something I’d really like to do this year. I once made a grand attempt at a novel, but only got a chapter in, so I’ll probably start with something a little smaller. I have some ideas in mind that I’d love to put on the page, I just need to motivate myself to do that. Write the World will be key in that motivation. It’s easier for me to work on a story when I know I can share it with a community that means a lot to me, and get feedback as well.
