Dear Muse: Real Advice for Real People (Sorta)
Send your
letters to
Dear Muse at stcsignature@yahoo.com.
We guarantee your confidentiality!
Muse, the inspiration that motivates a poet, artist, or thinker.
Dear
Muse,
A developer I work with says that we writers don't represent her work
accurately. She asked to have the source files to my docs so she could
"fix" them. The idea galls me. Not only do I work hard to represent
the product accurately to the user, I also think she believes anyone can
write these books. I thought of letting her have the books because I know
she'd mess up and learn a lesson from it, but I'm not sure. What should
I do?
Bugged
Dear Bugged,
Writing
is a profession that takes a lifetime to learn. We writers practice our
craft every day. Those who don't write, such as your developer, only see
that we make writing look easy. It would be tempting to hand off your
source files to this person just so she can see how "easy" our
work really is, but I don't recommend that. In the end, you would spend
more time cleaning up the damage than you would feeling vindicated.
Instead,
try a diplomatic approach. Explain that writers use a writing style that
is not easy to replicate. Tell her that you are trained to write books
just like she is trained to write code. Finally,
ask her to make a list of the things she'd like to see in the books, and
then do your best to add them.
If all of this placating and humoring doesn't work, say something like this:
"You want to fix the docs? Great. While you're at it, I'll fix some things I don't like about the product itself. You wouldn't mind if I tweaked your source code, would you?"
Muse
