I See What You Were Trying To Do Here

Conference call went well, clarified some notes for me. Got some good ideas from the collective mind.

A friend gave me a good analogy for this work. It's trying to hit a moving target. The more people get added to the mix, the more that target moves around.

There are certain types of notes that are frustrating. The ones that are vague, like "This doesn't work, can you come up with something... *better*?" Because "better" is infinite, and they've usually got a specific idea in mind that they're just not articulating.

Arguably the most difficult is the note that comes back to you asking you to fix something you think you've already fixed. At the risk of alienating non-fans of The Simpsons here, I'd like to reference the baseball-themed Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", wherein Mr. Burns repeatedly demands that Don Mattingly shave his sideburns. By the end, Mattingly's got a mohawk and Burns still insists that his sideburns are too long.

Best bit from the conference call was when one of the execs pointed out a line and said, "Now I see what you were trying to do here..." Because in the whirlwind of notes, it seemed to be a small acknowledgment that I did put some thought into the work. And there was an attempt to understand what I put into it.

But the call went well, it was very productive. And I'm not at all precious with anything. Slash and burn. Got to be careful not to cut the bits that THEY think are precious.

New deadlines. Preliminary draft due Monday/Tuesday, so I can get more feedback and make 11th hour adjustments for an official Friday draft submission. And then... I put my faith in God.

(A God that doesn't exist.)