Sentences, paragraphs and chapters
It's laughably easy to find someone to critique a sentence, to find a missing apostrophe or worry about your noun-verb agreement.
Sometimes, you're lucky enough to find someone who can tell you that a paragraph is dull, or out of place.
But finding people to rearrange the chapters, to criticize the very arc of what you're building, to give you substantive feedback on your strategy--that's insanely valuable and rare.
Perhaps one criticism in a hundred is actually a useful and generous contribution in your quest to reorganize things for the better.
[And for those in need of subtitles, this isn't a post about your next novel. It's about your business, your career and your life.]
Four people tell you that there was a typo on the third slide in your presentation. A generous and useful editor (hard to call them a consultant), though, points out that you shouldn't be doing presentations at all, and your time would be better spent meeting in small groups with your best clients.
Here's the link to Seth's blog:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/sentences-paragraphs-and-chapters.html
Posts
1 comment:
I'd seen Seth's post and had the same response to his thoughtful views. Except...
In my experience it's often a good friend or coach who has the info, the insight and the depth of concern to see beyond the written copy to recognize someone's talent for a totally different line of work.
Post a Comment