Run Forrest, Run!
The temptation as you’re first starting out is to take anything that pays even a penny a word. However, there comes a point in every writer’s life where the job description makes a person want to flee for the exit. Trust that feeling and read on.
I had this feeling a few weeks back. Got a message from a bloke wanting me to write his book. Oh, it was juicy enough to make me want to call back – attempted murder, government cover-up, all the bells and whistles that makes a writer salivate. Yet in conversation with said bloke, I came to the determination rather quickly that he may not be easy to work with. Enter descriptions that rambled. Okay, he’s excited. So I asked pointed questions. Still, the story went all over the map, and the clarification did, too. I couldn’t nail him down to giving me even the briefest of overviews of one single point. Imagine about 30 more minutes of this conversation and you feel my pain. All the while he’s interjecting the phrase “I’ve had tons of writers quit on me.” Okay, what do they know that I don’t?
Undaunted, I kept pressing for info. I wrote notes feverishly, thinking somewhere in his babble there was a story. Oh, there was, but it was at the point my pen went still and my jaw dropped. For this bloke, in this preliminary phone call, started to relay his past life in pantyhose. Honestly, that’s his real story, but the weird vibe I’d felt on hello was cemented. I really don’t care about his gender life at all, but that he had to tell me then and there, along with telling me even more personal stuff, sent the warning flags a-flying.
He does have a story, and I hope he writes it. I just cannot be his writer. Nope, it’s not based on his transgender choice. It’s based on his breaking that inner wall of intimacy way too quickly and in the way in which he delivered his information throughout. I’ve learned long ago to trust my instincts and to believe that my uncomfortable feeling should be heeded even at the risk of being non-PC. If he had told me a few conversations later, no problem. But on first meeting, it’s like ripping off the bandage and saying “Look here!” while you’re eating dinner.
Also, he was not, no way and no how, going to be able to convey to me in any coherent way what his story was. I got some of it, but it didn’t make sense when I tried adding it up later. Maybe a better writer would take a stab at it and succeed. Then again, he’d been through more than enough writers, so I’m betting it’s not me. In the past, I’ve written entire books based on a client’s brain dumps in email. But those had at least a little substance to chew on. That he was almost murdered under questionable circumstances for reasons that never seemed to materialize? I don’t think a Pulitzer winner could make that story work.
This brings to mind an author I contacted through on of the freelance-bidding sites several years back. When she discovered that I lived only an hour away from her, she wanted to meet with me so that she could “show me her talents in action.” Turns out she was a psychic who reads people by touching them. Freaked me WAY out! I don’t want to know anything about my future, but I especially don’t want a stranger feeling me up to predict what’s going to happen to me.
Kathy, I’m laughing hysterically! What an image! It had to take all your self control to keep from running.
Oh, the experiences we have in the name of work. I wonder if all professions have these problems?