đĄ My partner, a carpentry contractor, is working on a large project, a remodel of an historic home built in 1900. The house was three stories in some spots, and the remodel has added a third story in other parts of the home, added two baths, expanded the kitchen, as well as a wraparound porch and garages and a zillion other things like windows, doors, master bedroom walk-in, second and third story laundries, spiral staircases and oh, I could go onâŠHardie siding, shake shingles, changing rooflines, dormers, transom windows, you name it.
Heâs pretty much in his glory. In one of the endless conversations we have about the house, he mentioned that the architect he was working with, who is an acquaintance of his from high school, jokingly asks if my guy is keeping anything true to the print.
Seems this is how it goes on these types of projects. The builders, the ones in the trenches and the ones overseeing the construction day-to-day, take what someone else has suggested on paper (the blueprint) and then literally sometimes see things quite differently than what may have been intended.
They see that things might not work that way; they see things that can be improved when something is changed up a little. They see when something can be built better, bigger, smaller, moved over, compressed to fit more, expanded to allow grandiosity, or nixed on account of it doesnât work with the design, or flow in the right direction.
In other words, my partner has made lots and lots of changes to the actual house than the blueprint calls forâbecause well, he can, and because itâs now better.
In the midst of our conversation, I asked him if the architect ever minds so many changes in their many meetings, which inevitably means he must update his blueprint. âNo, not usually,â he said. âHeâs pretty good about it; he gets it.â This is how it works apparently.
Wow, just like a good editor, I thought. They give you parameters and direction and tone and style and word count and deadline, and they trust you to create something using those guidelinesâbut better.
Thatâs where us writers come in. We work within those parameters mostly, and veer off course when needed. When word count needs to be increased or when some aspect of their guidelines just doesnât fit, or even better, when we have some wonderful new study, data point, info or source that tells us something else completely different than the editor might have told us we could expect or include in the story.
And what do we do? Exactly what my partner does. We make it better. Weâre in the trenches and we know what the source says, what the data points are, what the latest adjustment should be, how something should read, which way it should goâessentially how to make it great.
𧱠Well, at least we try to make it great anyway, just like a house. We are the ones in the trenches, constructing a piece of writing brick by brick, detail by detail. It struck me that there are lots of similarities on how those two very different things workâhouse renovating and writing.
đ Both a slog to be sure, often an uphill battle filled with minutia and details so complex we often can overlook something easily, skip a step, forget to include a footnote or the great quote we highlighted three interviews back that never makes it inâfor space sake or because it just didnât fit where we put it, like a laundry room (sic).
So, the next time you allow yourself to marvel just a little that what you created from a blank sheet of Microsoft digital paperâ an essay, an article, a piece of content, a bookâremember it is a just like a house. It starts out of thin air, as an idea or a thought process. It morphs slowly sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph until thereâs something solid there. Not always necessarily what your blueprint said, but adjusted, skewed slightly, improved until it flowed, or sang, or created a rhythm you thought would work. It becomes the house you built.
đ Now, some of those âhousesâ are easy little darling we create in a couple of hours with not a lot of sweat or tears. Weâve become so good at building them, it hardly hurts to meet three or six or ten content deadlines this week made up of these little darlings with blueprints from your editor or client.
But others, the behemoths, the three-story reno with two new laundry rooms and that wrap around porch may take some tears, some sweat, some do-overs until theyâre right. They may take you poring over their blueprint and making lots of changes, correcting, adding, deleting, until finally you arrive at something you find acceptableâ home.
If you write itâŠ
Who/What/Where to Watch?
Talk about a book club? You havenât seen one like this.
Need a new course to get interested in for the next 6-10 weeks? Take a free class at Princeton. Thereâs a case study writing course as well as a few good psychology classes.
We all know that Bookstores are essential. Hereâs why.
Cosmo and a cool glass of Chardonnay? Yes, please. The millennial womenâs mag launches a wine, Uncorked by Cosmo. Cause what goes better with reading their mag than a nice varietal?
I canât resist a good book review list. This one is for 12 fascinating fantastical new books this fall.
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