She Wanted Me to Tell Her What to Write

She nodded vigorously and waved her hand, wrinkling her nose and furrowing her brow when I asked if she’d been to the Writing Studio before. Of course I’ve been here. I’ve been here a hundred times. I know all about this place, she gestured. Her description of the assignment was vague and scattered, but I chalked that up to having spent a lot of time with it – after all, she had 8 pages of completed work in front of her, and her assignment sheet was marked up, so she had clearly read the assignment through. What really caught my attention was that her objectives for our session were unclear: she wanted to know if her paper was right… and grammar. When I tried to get her to clarify her objectives, she repeated a similarly unclear line: “I just want to make sure it’s… that it’s correct. And that it’s clear.”

            “So, you want to ensure that you’re answering the questions your professor asks you in the assignment, and that your answers are organized and easy to follow?” I pressed.

            She pushed the assignment paper in front of me and pressed her finger into one of the assignment sections. “Like in this section,” she explained, her finger pressing on the header, “I need to answer these bullet points.” She jammed the point of her finger into each bullet point.

            This student was clearly stressed. I gently explained to her that we could go through and ensure that she was addressing each point of the assignment, but that I could not speak to whether or not they were “correct” or “incorrect.” She acknowledged that I could not tell her if her explanations were “right” or “wrong,” which seemed like a good start. However, it became clear to me in the first short section of the paper that what this client really wanted was for me to tell her what to write.

            This type of client – the type that wants you to tell them what to write and how to write it – can be particularly frustrating. For one thing, the clients themselves are often already frustrated, which is a difficult way to begin a consultation. Perhaps the most difficult part of engaging in this type of consultation, though, is the murkiness of it all: the client has unclear issues and/or objectives, and you have a hard time zeroing in on what the client wants or needs. In some instances, the client may not know that they want you to tell them what to write, which may lead to them feeling frustrated that you’re not helping them like they feel they need. In other instances, the client may be fully aware that they want you to tell them what to write, but know that you cannot/will not. Thus, they frame their objectives and questions in ways that are often unclear, confusing, and difficult to keep up with.

In my example above, the client seemed to know that she wanted me to tell her what to write, but knew that she could not directly ask me to tell her. Thus, her objectives were unclear, and the questions she asked as we read through her work required consistent re-interpretation. The further we got, the more frustrated she became, until she finally began asking me questions such as, “What do I need to write?” “What else should I talk about?” and “What do I need to add?”

I, of course, did not answer any of these questions.

From my experience, writers who want consultants to tell them what to write are experiencing a combination of “low writing confidence” and “something else.” The “something else” can be anything from a fear that they have not properly addressed the requirements of the assignment to a lack of confidence in their own ideas, connections, and conclusions.

These are some of the basic things I try to do when I encounter a writer that wants me to tell them what to write:

• First, because I believe that this behavior is largely based on a lack of confidence in the writer’s ability to write, understand, connect, and explain, I work toward building their confidence in their work, especially concerning their observations, connections, and conclusions.

• When writers ask questions regarding whether something is “correct” or “complete,” I turn the question back on them. If they press by asking if their writing “meets the requirements of the assignment,” I slowly go through each point of the assignment and ask where they addressed a particular point in their writing, effectively turning the question back on them yet again while simultaneously showing them how to answer the question.

• When writers ask questions such as “what else do I need to add?” I answer clearly and concisely, and again turn the question back on them: “Well, I don’t know. What do you think you need to add?”

• Even though I refuse to address the question that the writer is really trying to ask – “what should I write?” – I do try to help them figure out what they want/need to write about by asking them questions that force them to make connections between the assignment and their observations and conclusions.

• I recap and encourage, often at the end of each section, and definitely at the end of the session.

While these sessions can be some of the most difficult, I find that they are often also some of the most rewarding. Despite the fact that my client left our session feeling frustrated that I didn’t give her what she wanted, I saw a shift in her confidence to explain her ideas and to answer her own questions.

I call that improvement, no matter how reluctantly it was made.

By Joanna Bartell, PhD in Communication