Just spent multiple happy hours working on a friend’s book proposal. Doing work for friends can be tricky, mostly because if you feel nothing for the material or the approach, you know you can’t do it justice as an editor/consultant. And how can you say, “Well, sorry, but what you’ve been working on and agonizing over with so much passion just doesn’t, um … speak to me” to someone you love and like? It would be tough to get away with the old “it’s not you, it’s me” argument with someone who knows you too well fall for it.
Fortunately, that has never happened yet, with either a friend or a client. It was a wonderful relief to dive into TB’s (not my friend’s real name or initials) proposal and be delighted and intrigued with what was there already, so much so that spending lots more time with it than planned or promised was no trouble at all.
The really interesting part of the experience for me, though, was getting to these four paragraphs in the middle that suddenly sounded exactly like a real person. The whole thing was well put together and well written — but those paragraphs were riveting. Different somehow than everything that came before or after. Why? These were the parts he had written as placeholder text, as if he were hanging out with me over a glass of wine or cup of coffee, that were never intended for the “actual” proposal. You see where I’m going with this, right? Since he was not on stage (so to speak) at that point, he gave himself permission to sound like himself instead of trying to sound like what he thought a writer was supposed to sound like.
As a result, the best part of the entire proposal was the part he wrote thinking that no one would ever read it. The part he wrote to be deleted, the part he was embarrassed to show even me, was the gem shining out in contrast to everything around it.
The brilliant Brenda Ueland once wrote, “Pour out the dull things on paper, too — you can tear them up afterward — for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.”
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