Robert Rose has a follow-up question to this installment of Rejection which I recently posted…
You mention: "…I think I usually managed to hit that sweet spot between being Too Cooperative and Not Cooperative Enough. Writers often lose work by being one or the other." This got me curious as to how you would define "too cooperative." My guess is that it might be that the writer is writing exactly what he or she is told and not bringing anything original to the project. There might be times and places where that is useful, but generally when you're hiring someone for a creative position you expect them to be creative.
Obviously a writer who insists he's right about everything and is overly resistant to editing and input from the buyer is going to have problems. But I can imagine that perhaps a writer who never pushes back at all at proposed changes might be seen as lacking any confidence in their own ideas and work. Is it something along those lines, or were you thinking in a different direction?
You pretty much nailed it. One piece of sage advice I got in different forms from any number of older writers was, "Your job is to write, not take dictation." Some writers think the "safe" thing to do is to take whatever the producer or editor says, embellish it a little and give them back their own words and ideas. I suppose that works at times but the usual result is a bad script for which the writer gets blamed. Being too cooperative can also involve being a "yes man" or being unwilling to stand up and defend your own work.
Generally speaking, the people who hire you expect you to hand in something in which you take great pride. If you're too willing to change it, they think, "Gee, he doesn't care about it." That is not a good thing to have them think of you.
Right this moment, I can't think of a story about a writer being too cooperative but I will. I have way more stories about writers being too unwilling to rewrite or change things. Of course.
