Exercise 3 — Kill four

Return to your six from Exercise 2, but attach them to a person: a friend, mid-thirties, who has published nothing in four years, whose last piece was received badly, and who brings this up roughly every second time you meet. Cross out four. For each of the four, write the specific refusal it would earn — not "they wouldn't like it" but the sentence they would actually say back. Keep two, and rank them.

How to tell if it's any good: the four refusal sentences should be in their voice, and should be sentences you have genuinely heard from someone. If your refusals all sound like that's not true, you are imagining disagreement rather than refusal — real refusals are usually agreement that goes nowhere, like yeah, no, I know or sure, but you know what I mean. Check your surviving two against the accept-check: if either requires them to concede an earlier position, it does not survive, and you have three to kill, not four. And if the frame you kept is not the one their grammar welded, write a sentence defending why — sometimes it is right to go elsewhere, but it should be a decision you can name.