Copywriter in existantial crisis

I have a friend who is a genius.

It’s not easy to explain what he does. He’s a trainer and consultant. He trains people in sales, leadership and management qualities with radical new and innovative ideas. No schemes, roses, core quadrants, MBTI, or colour typing. Nothing like that. He has created a whole new philosophy on leadership and relationships. He has changed the way I see the world, my work and myself forever, and is has made me a lot less glorious than I'd always thought I was. I have attended his trainings more than twenty times and I could be called an ambassador, fan, or, if you like, a roadie. By the way, there is nothing new age, woolly or guru-ish to this man. He’s a cold blooded realist. 

Recently, he has written a book. And that is where the big ‘but’ kicks in. 

He’s my friend and I’m a copywriter. So he asked me to proofread and revise his book. In the beginning, I was really pleased to be asked for this desirable job. To be the first to read his book and finally show him what I was capable of… wow.

Apart from quite some of misspellings, grammar mistakes, contaminations, anglicisms,  expletives and pleonasms, the found his style a little bit laboured. So I started to rewrite the first chapters rigourously . On top of that, I commented in the margin things like ‘inconsistent’, ‘incomprehensible’, ‘duh’ or just ‘?’

I sent them back with a strong belief of having done a good job. Then his assistant called me. She sweetly explained to me that my friend was really happy that I did this job, but that he actually freaked out because of all the changes I made. I tried to defend myself. ‘But I only  corrected the real mistakes!’ ‘But due to your revision, it doesn’t say what he meant to say.’

Actually, that is not new to me. For example, I tend to rewrite all the passive forms into active ones. The sentence: The text will be revised by a professional press corrector is likely to be changed in A professional press corrector revises the text. Of course, there are a few good reasons to use a passive form, but it requires thinking, and most officials and lawyers use them automatically without any brain activity. I’m always fully prepared to argue with them, but I wasn’t prepared for this type of discussion with my genius philosopher.

His assistant kindly requested me to only correct the real typo’s and spelling mistakes and comment in the margin 1) why I thought a sentence should be changed and 2) with at least two suggestions for improvement. “It could be that we decide that the sentence with the grammar fault is actually the best,” she added.

With slightly less motivation I started to work on the next chapters. However, to explain why a sentence was wrong, took me twice as much time.

In the meantime, I had asked the assistant to send me first two chapters, to see which corrections he had accepted. To my surprise, he even ‘undid’ some corrected spelling mistakes. That was especially the case with the spacing issue: in Dutch you spell every word that consists of two or more compounds, together, without a space. In English, you don’t. My friend separated all my carefully put together words again.

I called his assistant (because he was too busy writing) to do some inquiries on this strange behaviour. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘He thinks this looks better.’

Looks better? What the F***!

And that brought immediately back the remembrance of two situations that I apparently had repressed.

I worked for two ladies who invented a really nice and sympathetic product, which could help people who had lost their beloved through a period of mourning. I wrote all their copy and argued more than once over this ‘space’ problem. The day they launched their products onto the market, I was invited to the party. The first thing I saw, was the huge banner, flag type, with an gigantic space typo. I was shocked. ‘I corrected that! I’m sure.’ ‘We know,’ one of the ladies reassured me. ‘But we thought this looked better.’

While I finished my third champagne, they asked me to come up on the stage. The other lady really thought she honoured me by saying – while I was standing right next to the spacing error: ‘This wonderful copywriter corrected all our copy. We really appreciate that she is so precise and stubborn.’

What the F***. Stubborn? Me?

The second situation was that I was pitching and I had to come up with a company slogan. Unfortunately, I lost the pitch to an advertising company. I was on a pretty good terms with the woman who invited me to pitch in the first place, and I asked her to see the result, just to be able to learn from it. When I opened her email, I immediately saw two major grammar mistakes. In the company slogan! I called her and explained to her what was wrong. Do you think she was grateful for this unasked advice? No. She said: ‘But this slogan felt better.’

These are the moments I wished I had studied medicine instead of becoming a walking dictionary. I would love to treat these customers.  

‘Yeah, I do agree. Those stitches don’t look good on you. We will not treat your appendicitis.’
‘Chemo really doesn’t feel good. Let’s not.’ 

The book of my genius friend is now for sale. In the word of thanks he states: “Thank you, dear Vera, my dear friend, for your professional revision work.”  At the same time, the blurb on the back of the book contains two major mistakes because, after all those discussions,  he hated me so much that he didn’t want to let me revise the very last bit any more.

By the way, his book is good.