Stayed up til 3am rewriting a proposal because my template vs starting from scratch comparison flopped

I had a big client pitch due Friday and kept trying to force my old template to work for their weird requirements. After 4 hours of fighting with formatting and generic language I just trashed it and started a blank document at midnight. Honestly the new version wrote itself in about 90 minutes because I wasn't fighting against pre-existing structure that didn't fit. Has anyone else had better luck ditching templates for one-off projects like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

young.nora1mo ago

Oh goodness, I used to be the opposite - I always thought templates were the safe bet. But after a disaster with a client who had very specific needs, I finally gave up and went blank page and it turned out so much better.

craig.john1mo ago

Same thing happened to me last month. Spent a whole night trying to jam a square peg into a round hole with a template, then gave up and wrote something fresh in under two hours. It's like the blank page isn't the enemy, it's the old structure that's holding you back.