Two ways to start
Two openings for the same piece.
A. Nowadays many people prefer to pay professionals to do jobs in their homes rather than doing these jobs themselves.
B. For about ten years I did everything myself, and I was quietly proud of it.
Four questions.
1. How many people are in opening A?
2. What does B tell you that A does not?
3. What is the function of quietly proud?
4. Is A wrong?
The model · 323 words
What I stopped doing myself
For about ten years I did everything myself, and I was quietly proud of it. I painted the flat. I fixed the bike. I did my own tax return, badly, over two evenings every January, and told people it was straightforward.
Then in one year three things happened. I had the flat painted, because I broke a wrist. I had the bike serviced, because the gears had been slipping for eight months and I had done nothing about it. And I got an accountant to do the tax return, because the year before I had made an error that took four months to unwind.
None of it was about money. The painting cost more than the wrist did. It was about something I would not have admitted at the time: I thought paying somebody was an admission of incompetence, and doing it myself proof of something.
What I found instead was time, and not the amount I expected. The flat took a decorator four days and would have taken me three weekends. But the real difference was the eight months before the bike and the four months after the tax return. The time a job spends waiting for me is always longer than the job.
I would not take this the whole way. Some things I do myself because I like doing them, and having them done would remove the point. I still cook. I still fix punctures on the pavement in the rain, out of pure stubbornness.
There is one question I now ask before anything goes on the list, and it is not what it costs. It is how long this will sit there if it stays mine. When the honest answer is months, I get somebody in, and I have stopped hearing that as a defeat.
Next year we are having the kitchen done — which ten years ago I would have attempted, and which would still be half finished.
Four questions about the model.
1. Count the causatives in paragraph two.
2. Why does paragraph three say the painting cost more than the wrist?
3. What is the central observation of the piece?
4. Why is the paragraph about cooking and punctures there?
Repair a weaker one
The five moves: what you used to do yourself, and what you told people about it · the year it changed, and the things you had done · what it was actually about, once money is ruled out · the thing you still do yourself, and why · the question you now ask, and what is next.
Below, a second piece with four sentences removed.
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
We got a cleaner in the year our second child was born, and I told everybody it was because of the baby. [1]
The flat had been getting worse for two years before that. Neither of us was refusing to clean it. We were both doing roughly forty per cent of it, each assuming the other would notice the rest. [2]
[3] It took a stranger with a mop to end an argument that had nothing to do with mops.
Marta comes on Thursdays and it takes her three hours. [4]
I still do not tell people about it easily, and I have stopped examining why.
From spoken to written
Rewrite each line for a written reflective piece. Keep the meaning and the honesty; lose the speech. The words in the avoid list must not appear.
Spoken → written reflection
Basically I just got someone in cos I couldn’t be bothered doing it myself any more.
Spoken → written reflection
It was well expensive but honestly it was so worth it.
Spoken → written reflection
I’m not gonna lie, I felt kind of bad about not doing it myself.
Spoken → written reflection
The guy came round and sorted the whole thing out in like two hours.
Spoken → written reflection
At the end of the day you’ve got to know what you’re rubbish at.
Spoken → written reflection
We got the kitchen done and it was a total nightmare tbh.
Three questions.
1. Where do the causatives belong in this piece?
2. What has to be ruled out before the real explanation lands?
3. Why include one thing you still do yourself?
The piece
How the twenty-three minutes run. Five to plan, fourteen to write, four to exchange. The plan matters here because the third move — what it was actually about — is almost impossible to find while you are also making sentences.
Stage 1 · Alone · 5 minutes · Plan
Something you stopped doing yourself, or something you still refuse to stop doing. Cleaning, cooking, tax, hair, bikes, cars, childcare, a garden, a website, the accounts of a small business.
Five lines. The third one is the one the piece is for.
- 1 · What you did yourself, for how long, and what you told people about it.
- 2 · Two or three things you had done instead, and what pushed each one over the line.
- 3 · What it was actually about, once money has been ruled out. Write this one honestly or the piece will not work.
- 4 · The thing you still do yourself, and the real reason.
- 5 · The question you now ask before anything goes on the list — and one line about what is next.
Stage 2 · Alone · 14 minutes · Write
Three hundred and twenty words, six or seven short paragraphs, one per move plus the close.
Fourteen minutes. Banned throughout: nowadays · many people · in my opinion · basically · at the end of the day · it is worth mentioning that.
- Open with a person and a span of time. No general statement about society.
- Cluster your causatives in the second paragraph, and get the auxiliaries right: had it painted, got somebody to do it, had had it done if it was already finished.
- Rule money out in one sentence before you offer the real explanation.
- Keep the exception paragraph. Two sentences is enough.
- End on the question you now ask, then one short line about what is next. No summary.
Stage 3 · Pairs · 4 minutes · Exchange
Swap. Two jobs, in this order, and neither of them is proofreading.
Four minutes. Tools, then honesty.
- Read with a pen and mark every sentence that has the writer doing work they did not do. Write the count at the top.
- Read paragraph three and say whether you believe it. If it names money, or reads like something acceptable to say, hand it back — that is the paragraph the piece exists for.
- Say which sentence you would keep if the piece had to be cut to one. Nine times out of ten it is in paragraph four.
What your partner found
Two questions.
1. How many “tools” sentences survived into your written draft?
2. Did your partner believe paragraph three?
Written, and unflagged
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Why is the error worse in writing than in speech?
2. What does the piece rule out before offering an explanation?
Next. The unit task: the finished piece and a spoken description, assessed on one question — can a listener say who did the work in every sentence you produced?