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"Nice
Pants"
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(Appeared originally in Words of
Mouth, Spring 1999)
You've
probably seen the commercial. A young American tourist in Paris finds himself eyed
by an alluring Parisienne. She approaches. He anticipates. You can feel his
heart beating. She speaks softly as she glides past him. A passing waiter
translates her comment: "Nice pants."
Yesterday I got a call from the Managing Producer
of a large and successful production organization here in Washington. We ended up
trading stories about competitive bidding. "I worked with this one
writer," he said, "who wrote good proposals but always printed them out on cheap
paper. My clients noticed it every time, and for two years I couldn't convince any
of them to choose him for a contract. One day I told him what I thought the problem
was. He switched to really good paper and won the next three jobs he bid."
Nice pants.
I've always used good paper (the paper I use for
proposals and final scripts is more expensive than the pants I wear), but I know how that
writer feels. I spend hours and hours honing each sentence to a keen edge, and often
the only feedback I get is, "Love the way you format pages. What word processor
do you use?" I bite my tongue, glad that the client likes the way my writing looks
but disheartened at such seeming disregard of how it sounds and what it says.
It is sad but true that, like so many other things
in 20th Century American culture, writers and writing are judged largely by their image.
A writer can, standing on principle, refuse to use $11/ream paper and a
720dpi laser printer. He can refuse to wear a tie to initial meetings with clients
and shun giving out professionally designed business cards. But the tide will run
against him (or her). Starving writers starve for a reason. Better for
business to join what you can't beat and to develop an image that matches the standards of
your writing.
A few guidelines:
- Know the image standards of the
market. People buy from people they feel
comfortable with, and professionals feel most comfortable with others who look, dress and
act professionally. Subscribing (within reason) to the style of the business world
you serve gives you a foot in the door.
- Create a unity of impression. Edgar Allan Poe said that every element in a short story
should contribute to a "unity of impression." (Not a single syllable in
"The Cask of Amontillado" distracts from the story's tense irony or forward
motion.) Writing, in short, should create a tightly focused image. So should
writers. Every element of your business that touches the world--your answering
machine message, your fax cover page, your business stationery, your page formats, your
home page, the briefcase you carry, the pen and the notebooks you use, the way you answer
the telephone--should build your image as a professional.
- Radiate a "can do/will
do" attitude. Not all writing assignments are
gems. Not all clients are warm and fuzzy. Accept the cliff scalings with the
cakewalks, the curmudgeons with the kittens. Muster the same enthusiasm to write the
fifteenth draft that came to you naturally when you wrote the first. In this
business, a positive attitude and a willingness to tackle and retackle every assignment
until it's done right are as essential to success as good grammar and a broad vocabulary.
- Listen to everyone. Listening is the mark of someone who is interested, confident
and observant--all things that clients want in a writer. Let your writing do the
talking.
- Write everything well. It's easy to write the fun stuff well. It's challenging
to write the tough stuff well. It's expected that you'll write all your
assignments well. But what about your letters, invoices, Post-It® notes and e-mail
messages? Keep in mind that people judge writers by every word they pen, type,
scribble or scrawl.
You may not want to be recognized for your pants.
But it's better than not being recognized at all.
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