RE: Drafts -- some people not clear on the concept...

[Steven Oppenheimer <writer -at- writemaster -dot- com>]

My sources of complaint are three-fold:

1.  Jobs where a boss or editor grabs a draft off a desk, or off the 
network drive, before I've told them it's ready -- and then they go 
ballistic, when in fact they are looking at writing in such a rough stage 
that I was not ready to show it to anyone.  Their behavior is rude, 
impulsive, and just plain dumb.  Sure, it may be their "right", but what is 
to be gained?  It makes a lot more sense if they wait until the employee 
says, "Hey, boss, now I have something ready to show you."

2.  A good boss -- my definition, of course -- does not mind looking at a 
very rough, crude, even sloppy first draft.  The purpose -- and the *ONLY* 
purpose, at such an early stage stage -- is to make sure that the writer is 
not, in some sense, headed down the wrong path on the project.  A capable 
reader, and a capable manager, can read for the general direction or sense 
of things when necessary, as well as reading for details and fine points 
when appropriate (generally at a later stage of a project).

3.  An inability to prioritize flaws in a draft, and -- a closely related 
problem -- an inability to see the forest for the trees.

My writing all this is partly motivated by a recent experience, and maybe a 
concrete example will help make my point of view clear.  About six months 
ago I wrote a business plan for a company being started by some people who 
are not very experienced in business.  I took their rough ideas and 
organized them, provided structure, a solid outline, raised a host of 
issues they had not even thought to ask -- issues that will surely be 
raised by potential investors -- and then provided plausible working 
answers to these same questions for these businessmen to review and 
edit.  I did background research on their competitors (which they should 
have done in the first place), and addressed those issues as well.  I put a 
lot of work into this thing, and gave them a very strong starting point.
	In short, I had taken their half-baked, disorganized thoughts about their 
business, and I provided a terrific FIRST DRAFT of the document that would 
serve as an excellent foundation for laters drafts, and for planning the 
running of the business itself.  Then one of the businessmen went ballistic 
because I has misspelled his name, and also because a single technical 
number (an important number, but still one single number) in the document 
was mistaken -- both trivial errors, easily corrected with a word processor.
	And, I am not at all sure that these errors were mine;  I have yet to 
review my tape recording of the original meeting, for all I know they may 
have provided me with the wrong information in the first place.  But even 
if the errors were mine, they were trivial and easily corrected.  This is 
what I mean by nit-pickers.  I don't mind that they found the errors, but I 
frankly do mind that they got upset over them.  And as for all the added 
value I put into their plan, that they missed entirely.  I have no patience 
for clients like this.  Then again, these guys were pretty much amateurs, 
and my main mistake was not seeing that in the first place, and so agreeing 
to work for them.  So far their business has gone nowhere, and I suspect 
that that is where it willl remain.

In any event, I'm always open to constructive feedback and corrections on 
my work.  But I do appreciate it when the merits of my work are 
acknowledged and appreciated alongside the necessary and inevitable 
corrections.  I am very skilled at organizing and structuring ideas in an 
orderly way, accessible way.  As for the inevitable errors, these details 
are so easy to correct with word processors -- that's what technical 
reviews are for -- I see no reason for readers to get upset over them.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Steven Oppenheimer
Marketing and Technical Writing
www.writemaster.com
writer -at- writemaster -dot- com



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