The Best Rough Draft Ever Written

If you're having trouble writing a?business case?... or producing a presentation or?doing anything for that matter …

I want you to think about how Tom Wolfe launched his career.

Wolfe, in case you aren't familiar, pioneered a new form of magazine writing in the 1960s known as "New Journalism", which basically merged non-fiction reporting with a novelist’s eye for detail and story telling.

He was a character.

He wore these exuberant, flamboyant white ice-cream suits all year round because he said it disarmed the people he observed, making him, in their eyes, "a man from Mars, the man who didn't know anything and was eager to know”.

Of course, it didn't earn him accolades everywhere …

For instance, while gathering material once for a magazine piece on Southern California surf culture, a few locals in La Jolla, California who were annoyed by the dapper writer walking around in a white suit and shoes on Windansea Beach spray painted, “Tom Wolfe is a dork!” on a sea wall in huge letters.

Of course, Wolfe embraced it, knowing that you can't accomplish anything if you don't win ATTENTION first.

Anyway ... before all that, Tom Wolfe was a relative nobody who had been green-lighted to write an article about hot rod and custom car culture for Esquire magazine.

He struggled to write the piece until his editor Byron Dobell told him to just send the notes he had compiled so that the editors could try and salvage something.

Wolfe procrastinated some more …

Finally, the night before the deadline, he typed a long letter to Dobell, explaining what he wanted to say on the subject, just brain-dumping everything and ignoring all journalistic rules and conventions.

What happened next would change the course of literary history.

Dobell called Wolfe.?He told the writer he was removing the salutation "Dear Byron" from the top of the letter and would just publish the entire thing intact as the finished piece, unedited.

The result was "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.”

(The title alone tells you how unconventional it was.)

It was an article like nothing else before it.?Everyone talked about it.?

Some loved it.?Some hated it.?

But it launched his career and Tom Wolfe never looked back ????

If you didn't hold back, if you just?let fly what you really thought in your own unique way, what's the worst thing that could happen?

Remember - Set your life alight and seek out those who fan your flame!

Your Coach,

Stephanie