(The first part of this series is still available. The Professional Writer: Part One - Self Promotion.)
To be a professional writer, there has to be a customer – someone willing to pay for your carefully crafted words. If you have a boss, a magazine editor or an advertising client, they are all customers paying you for a service. In all situations, writing for a customer is a completely different scenario to writing for yourself.
I currently work as a copywriter, producing wonderful words, premium prose and titanic text for webpages and online marketing campaigns. Every day sees me writing for a different client. Yesterday I wrote about crane certification. Today I was immersed in medical skin treatments. Tomorrow I could be constructing paragraphs on incense, or pool fencing, or website design, or limo hire, or… you get the idea. I am a professional writer, and as such, the customer is my lord and master.
If the idea of someone else directing your creative endeavours scares the pants off you, then I’m sorry but maybe professional writing isn’t for you. Whether you write movies, comics, novels, magazine articles or the witty text on the back of beer mats, someone else is in control, someone else has the power to exert influence over your talent.
Almost every piece I write has a different customer at the other end, passionate about their product or business and ready to tear my work to shreds if it doesn’t live up to their enthusiasm. And that is the trick. I need to imbue my writing with the same enthusiasm, passion and interest as if they had written the piece themselves (albeit with better phrasing).
Customer First, Writer Second
Given the choice, I wouldn’t be writing about skin care today. Given the choice I would be putting that cool idea for a new comedy script down onto paper and taking my imagination off the leash for a run in the park. But I don’t have a customer willing to pay for that right now. My customer wants me to get excited over skin care, so excited I will be.
Professional writing by necessity means that you have to put your own interests second. It means not always being able to choose what you write and what you turn away – unless you are very lucky and have enough work to choose.
When dealing with customers, whoever they are, their opinion always outweighs yours. It doesn’t matter if you think your article is the best use of language since Chaucer, if your customer doesn’t agree, you need to rewrite or risk the bill staying unpaid.
Granted, some writers are respected enough that their opinion counts. But until your name is spoken of in hushed tones in literary circles and an award has been named after you, it’s safe to assume you’re not one of them. Even the most famous best-selling authors on the planet have book editors suggesting changes to be made and calling for rewrites.
The Brief
I don’t start work anymore without instructions in writing. After two experiences of a customer continually changing what they wanted (because I don’t think they’d ever really thought it through before leaping in), it became important for me to have a detailed brief agreed upon before I even warm up the brain cells.
This can be as simple as an email outlining my understanding of the job and their positive response. Whatever method you use, having a clear, written scope of work up front can save hours of time later.
How many words are expected? Is there a particular tone or style to be used? What is the goal of the piece; instigate a sale, inform or entertain? What specific themes are to be included? The possible questions go on and on, but without answers to these, it is possible for a customer to turn around after you have invested hours in the job, wondering whether a light-hearted comedy piece would be more fun than a factual news article.
One of the first things I learnt about being a professional writer is that most people think it is easier than it actually is. They see 500 words and think it will only take you half an hour to rewrite it from scratch. I know that 500 words took half a day of research, planning, creativity and struggling to find the right words in the thesaurus before I even hit the first key.
Writing isn’t easy. Professional writing is hard. Sometimes, every word is like squeezing blood onto the page. Try writing a 1000 word sales document on a complex customer management software package when you’re as technically illiterate as me. Without a brief, those 1000 words would be harder still.
Rewrites
When it comes to redrafts and edits, a professional writer always has to provide the service. Believe me, there will be rewrites. If Shakespeare were writing today, he would be asked to change something.
The important fact is to ensure there are guidelines laid down to maintain some control during the rewrite process. Without a fixed arrangement, it is easy to fall into the trap of performing continual rewrites and this can be a very costly exercise.
All of my customers know up front what to expect in the rewrite process. They know they will be allowed to request one round of edits, beyond which additional charges come into play. This focuses the customer on providing the best feedback once, rather than dribbles of nitpicky and vague feedback over a number of drafts.
The Customer is Always Right
I know. I hate the cliché as much as anyone. But it just so happens to be true.
It may irritate that a customer asked to remove the one paragraph of which you were proud. It may annoy that the editor rearranged your carefully formed paragraphs to conform to their latest garish magazine layout. It may rankle to see your work on a website six months later with additional lines added by someone you’ve never met who displays the literary capacity of a baboon. None of this matters if you were paid.
But that doesn’t mean I am a voiceless puppet. I will offer opinion and in some cases will politely state my case. But, after the discussion if the customer still wants the changes to go ahead, it is my responsibility to not only carry them out, but carry them out with the same enthusiasm I put into the rest of the piece.
A professional writer can find satisfaction even in the most compromised writing, satisfaction in having served the customer well. But the best professional writers can produce work that caters to the customer’s whims whilst still maintaining a spark.
A professional writer is as happy writing someone else’s words as he is his own.
Don't forget to subscribe today so you don't miss any of the five articles in this series. Return next Friday for Part Three in this series - 'Looking the Part'.
