wearing the other hat...
May. 30th, 2009 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lagilmanDuring my meeting with a client yesterday, I was reminded of how much I really, really love working with writers in an editorial/advisory capacity, and how damn good I am at it (my ego is hesitant in many spots, but my editorial skills I've always been comfortable about -- my weakness was in my refusal to play stupid-to-me office games).
I miss it. Not enough to give up my oh so glam life [/fe] right now, of course. But I do miss the interacting part, the helping-make-book-better part.
During the course of the face-to-face I managed to explain why the POV she was using was not helpful to the story and gave her examples of better choices (translating her manuscript into a different POV verbally, on the fly, which was actually a fun exercise for me, too), discussed the importance of letting the story build on itself, and clarified how to show more with a single line than can be told in a paragraph.
Specifically, I did all this without ever once using textbook-speak -- she didn't have the background to understand text-speak, and I find that while useful after the fact, it often gets in the way of the gut-level act of writing. And, at the end of the meeting, the client had a firm grasp not only of what she wanted/needed to do, but was enthused about the new ways she was going to approach it, where before she had been hesitant.
She was also amused/heartened when I showed her my own manuscript, which had just as many vicious slashes and scribbles on it as her material. "It never gets better?" "Oh, it gets better, I said. "It just doesn't get any easier. There's always another step up you should want to climb..."
No, don't want to go back to the two hour meetings, the sales presentations, the heartbreak and the heartburn. But... it's nice to stretch those particular muscles on someone else's behalf, every now and again, yeah.
I miss it. Not enough to give up my oh so glam life [/fe] right now, of course. But I do miss the interacting part, the helping-make-book-better part.
During the course of the face-to-face I managed to explain why the POV she was using was not helpful to the story and gave her examples of better choices (translating her manuscript into a different POV verbally, on the fly, which was actually a fun exercise for me, too), discussed the importance of letting the story build on itself, and clarified how to show more with a single line than can be told in a paragraph.
Specifically, I did all this without ever once using textbook-speak -- she didn't have the background to understand text-speak, and I find that while useful after the fact, it often gets in the way of the gut-level act of writing. And, at the end of the meeting, the client had a firm grasp not only of what she wanted/needed to do, but was enthused about the new ways she was going to approach it, where before she had been hesitant.
She was also amused/heartened when I showed her my own manuscript, which had just as many vicious slashes and scribbles on it as her material. "It never gets better?" "Oh, it gets better, I said. "It just doesn't get any easier. There's always another step up you should want to climb..."
No, don't want to go back to the two hour meetings, the sales presentations, the heartbreak and the heartburn. But... it's nice to stretch those particular muscles on someone else's behalf, every now and again, yeah.
