I recently had the pleasure of meeting a brilliant entrepreneur and learning all about his amazing business before
sitting down to write about it for a rather rushed project.
I was very inspired by him and the way he talked about what he was doing. He was dripping with pride. During the hour that we chatted, I felt that I knew all I needed to know about the business to write about it well. I felt that we had a great rapport and I really hoped that things would work out.
So I spent the next couple of days making notes, scribbling down thoughts and ideas.
It was a tight deadline we were dealing with and we decided I’d have a draft ready a couple days before he needed the piece submitted. No problem. I had the piece written and edited by Christine on time.
The next day I learned that the client hated it.
It sounded like him (that must have been the ghostwriter in me, soaking up voices again), but that wasn’t what he was after. He told me that he didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but that it just wasn’t what he wanted. At all.
I told him he wasn’t hurting my feelings . . . that it was a first draft and I needed to have all of his honest feedback in order to make it sound the way he wanted.
He ended up telling me to forget about it . . . that we were too close to the deadline, and he wasn’t going to bother.
That was the part that hurt!
I told him that I was confident I could tweak it to where he wanted it, now that I had some direction (basically, scrap the whole thing and go in a completely opposite direction) and that I would have a second draft later that day.
So that’s what I did.
When I had finished with the second draft, I composed an email, attached the document, held my breath, and pressed send.
Just as I was getting my kids ready for bed that evening, I got a phone call.
He loved it. He had zero changes, a smile in his voice, and a piece of writing that he loved.
All it took was one round of revisions.
See, a draft is a draft. Whether I’m writing a creative piece or a piece of sales copy, I will never say that I’ll always get it right the very first time. (Most of the time I do, by the way, but it would be irresponsible of me to guarantee such a claim.)
When you provide writing for a living—as the product you sell—it is SO objective. Feedback is nothing personal. It’s only feedback.
My first draft for this client was a solid piece of writing. I stand behind that. But that’s not what matters. It wasn’t what the client wanted. I do know what I’m doing when it comes to my work, and after our discussion about what he didn’t like about the first draft, I was able to use what he told me and my own intuition to come up with exactly what he wanted.
So when you hire someone to write for you (pick me! pick me!), don’t be too heartbroken if they (I) don’t nail it on the first draft. After all, that’s what second drafts are for.
Photo credit: said_the_lorax
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