I Met a Random Person in a Mall Food Court and Got the Best Writing Advice of My Life
He had the courage to give me tough feedback
Several months ago, a retired gentleman named Bob emailed me after stumbling on my blog. He said he lived near me and told me he’d love to meet up to talk about writing.
I had never received an email like that before, so I had no idea what to do.
I was intrigued. I told my wife that I wanted to meet Bob. She asked me the typical spouse questions: Who is this person? Are you sure it’s safe? What are you going to talk about?
Despite my shortage of reasonable answers to any of my wife’s reasonable questions, I responded to Bob and scheduled a time to meet him at a nearby mall (read: a safe, well-lit area with lots of people around).
Bob and I met at a Panda Express in a local mall food court.
As it turned out, Bob was a published author. He had written several business books and had taken the time to read quite a few of my articles online.
Five minutes after meeting me, Bob leveled me with some unsolicited feedback:
“You write well and you have good content, but your writing is too dry. It needs more…
