One of my current clients approached me with a plea for help: he wanted to “clean up” his website content, newsletters, current blog posts; he also needed some help developing learning materials for a newly-birthed online course. With an evaluation, I was able to break that need for help into several immediate needs:
- Prose clarity
- Foregrounding his argument
- Editing to remove circular thoughts and repetition
Here’s just one paragraph of his content:
Before
Where there is a will, there is a way. That is the old saying that applies to this lesson. Many people are not willing to help out when needed. This is mostly due to bad experiences with helping others. They may have been taken advantage of or just had a horrible experience doing it. People have their reasons, but I can only think of one instance when I helped that I regret it. I was asked to help load up a truck for a couple to move out of town. I went along with several of my friends. When we arrived we found that nothing had been done, they had to be out in a couple of hours, they knew about this for a few weeks. They also had a house full of cats and let’s say that these cats didn’t know what a litter box was. The house was filthy and disgusting. However, when all was done with this project, they were grateful. We were glad it was done. I came home and burned my clothes
After
Many people aren’t willing to help when needed, and this is usually due to previous bad experiences. I’ve gone through this myself, so let me outline one instance when I regretted offering to help. I was asked, with several of my friends, to help load up a truck for a couple moving out of town. When we arrived, we found nothing had been done but they had to be out in a couple hours, and they had known about this for a few weeks. They also had a house full of cats that didn’t seem to know what a litter box was: filthy and disgusting. When all this was one, though, they were grateful, we were glad it was over, and I came home to shower twice and burn my clothes (not really). Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?
I sent him three potential options for standard revision, and we chose the one that felt closest to his goals for the final products. While retaining his personal voice and style, we’ve reorganized for clarity and connection–polishing what was originally rough enough to lose us, into something clean enough to get those clicks.
Something Polished 