Tell It Like It Is
One of the biggest problems I had in grad school was the ethics involved in writing research papers.
Now, I’m not talking about plagiarism or anything like that. This was much more subtle.
We were expected, when writing papers, to have a thesis and support it. That’s pretty standard, I think, for most types of non-fiction writing. Build your argument, provide evidence, that sort of thing. But, there was something we weren’t allowed to do: point out potential weaknesses in our arguments. You leave that to others in the field who will, no doubt, offer up critical thought on your work. Only after they raise objections do you address potential problems with your thesis.
In other words, you can’t tell it like it really is.
To me, this seemed irresponsible. Why? For several reasons:
- Others can completely miss a weakness that you’ve readily identified. Your argument, then, stands not on its own merit but on the lack of insight on the part of your critics.
- Failure to point out potential problems with your argument prevents others from finding solutions to that problem. You eliminate your cheering section and defenders.
- This approach only provides a singular view of the topic. The paper exists in a vacuum, speaking only to itself and, in many ways, only being heard by like-minded folks.
- Leaving out important information in this context is, in my mind, akin to deception.
In some ways, copywriting is a lot like writing graduate research papers. When you’re writing copy, you write about the positive points of a product or service - its features or benefits. You don’t write about potential problems with the product or about how another product might function in a similar way. You restrict the flow of information and leave it to the consumer to discover the counter-arguments or problems on their own. If you don’t, your copy doesn’t convert.
Is this good or bad? Do the ethics of academic research apply to the ethics of copywriting? Should academic research take the same approach as copywriting? Is it possible to tell it like it really is when writing copy and still make sales?
The Dangers of Success
Ganesha, Hindu God of Success
Anyone who’s been freelance writing for any amount of time can probably tell you about the feast-or-famine cycle of what we do. Like any other small business, the freelance writer is subject to a number of forces beyond his control, not the least of which is the market itself.
But sometimes, it isn’t feast-or-famine. Sometimes, it’s just enough. Your kids are fed, your mortgage is paid up and you’ve even managed to take up a golf habit without breaking the bank. Life is good.
So, what’s the problem? A steady income doing something you love - that’s the dream, isn’t it?
Yes and no. Yes, that’s certainly part of the dream, but that’s not the dream itself.
My First Writing Client
I’ve told you all my story, about how I got into Internet writing, and about how I spent those early days as a Jewish woman in Atlanta. What I haven’t told you, at least not directly, is that that first client was my only client for more than two years. She paid well, and I was still working on my Master’s degree, so it wasn’t as if I needed a long list of clients. She also provided a ton of encouragement, constantly telling me how lucky she was to have me.
I was comfortable; successful.
So, I didn’t really look for other work. My parenting and pregnancy gig paid the bills, at least the part of the bills my student loans and Angie’s job didn’t cover.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, or at least a trickle. My client just ran out of things for me to write. That was all right with me; I’d become more than a little burnt out on the topic. By my guess I wrote more than 3,000 parenting and pregnancy articles over three years for that client. It was even to the point where I was writing slowly and losing productivity because I’d rehashed the same topics so many times.
Branching Out
When the pregnancy writing slowed, I did a few things to try to replace that work. First,I opened my roleplaying blog and a work-at-home mom blog. Neither was especially successful. The RPG blog is still up, and I’m treating it entirely as a hobby. The WAHM blog is gone, although I’ve got it in a WordPress backup file and have thought many times about a relaunch.
I also began bidding on projects at the freelance sites - Guru.com, Scriptlance.com, Elance.com, etc. I garnered a few clients from those sites, but nothing stellar. Again, it was enough to get by.
In retrospect, I didn’t branch out soon enough. Had I been smart about it, I’d have leveled off my pregnancy writing slowly, rather than sucking that well until it was dry. I think I’d have become less burnt out on the topic, too.
At any rate, my writing career moved into a feast-or-famine cycle. Mostly, it was famine. The work I was finding just didn’t pay what I needed, and there wasn’t enough of it.
That’s the thing about hunger, though; it will motivate you. That lack of steady work forced me to be on my toes, and find clients wherever I could. Eventually, I found a steady gig.
The Contract
Finally, after a good long while, I landed a big writing contract. It was steady work with unlimited potential. The pay was low, but I could write as much or as little as I wanted. On top of all that, it was a three-year contract. I was going to be set for a while. The topics were varied, if not interesting, and the client used a bulky interface to upload the work, but it was steady. I kept a few smaller clients on the side, but nothing significant in terms of volume.
I was humming along, quite content to work way too much for way too little. After all, it was a form of success. It paid the bills. I probably would have continued that way, too, if it hadn’t been for this blog.
The Blog
Not long after opening up the Writing Journey, I gained a new client. The pay was, generally, better than my contract work. We quickly established a smooth working relationship. I did good work, and the client liked it. On top of that, the client started throwing all sorts of new types of writing my way, and I was able to delve into niches and styles that I’d never done before. The client even talked about “discovering a gem.” Itt made me think about that first writing client, and how she said she was lucky to have me.
Finally, one day my new client said something that really hit me. “Bob,” she said, “Get out of that little freelancer mindset and start rocking things. You’re better than this.”
Success had, once again, made me complacent. My client was calling me out on it, and she was right to do so.
Helping Internet Writers Achieve Their Dreams
In part, that conversation was responsible for the Dream Meme post. It’s all about refocusing, remembering that success isn’t just putting food on the table. It’s about doing something greater. It’s about doing something that benefits my readers, and really making a difference with my writing and with my work. It’s about writing what I want to write. It’s about finding new clients, and being an entrepreneur on top of being a writer.
So, I’ve been doing some work on a couple of levels. First of all, I’m putting the final touches on a services page. You should see that later this week. Second, I’ve spent some quality time working on my writer mentoring program, bringing that project into a clearer focus. In fact, you can expect an announcement on that topic some time in July, and I think you’ll be pleased with it. I’m so geeked about it that I can hardly contain myself.
In short, I’ve been shaken up out of my success nap, and things are hopping.
So, what about you? Have you ever found yourself just sort of getting by? What did you do to stir things up? Or are you stuck with a small mindset, and do you need someone or something to shake you out of it?
Image by Pingu1963
The Hard Truths of the Writing Life
Meryl Evans, the Content Maven, is an amazing colleague who was hanging around the blogosphere long before most of us had ever heard of blogging. She’s celebrating her 8th year at Meryl.net, and as part of the celebration she’s asked several rockstar freelance writers to put up guest posts.
She asked me to send her one, too 
We talked yesterday about Why Writers Fail, and those can be some hard truths to face. In that same vein, my guest post over at Meryl’s place talks about the hard truths of the writing life.
Go check it out, and give Meryl a visit today to help her celebrate her success, won’t you?
Why Writers Fail
“That’s not fair!”
I could hear my daughter’s voice three rooms away. Summoning the courage requisite to parent a teenager, I proceeded down the hall with trepidation.
Peering into her bedroom, I asked “What’s wrong, Kate?”
“ERRRGH! I can’t believe this! My stupid History teacher gave me a ‘D’ on my biography project! I HATE her!”
Now, I remember the biography project. This was a project the teacher assigned in December, due in April. I remember Katie working feverishly on that project. She slaved away for about half an hour, the night before it was due.
Of course, that was the only time she’d touched the project. Truth be told, I was surprised she got a passing grade at all.
“Well, Kate,” I was trying to choose my words very carefully. I didn’t want a blow-up over this. “Do you think you deserved better than that?”
“Well, duh! Of course I did. I worked hard on that project! She just hates me. My teacher hates me!” Katie’s eyes were beginning to swell up with tears.
I wanted to give her a big hug, tell her it would be all right. That the teacher was a moron, and that Katie is probably a stronger reader than the teacher (it’s true, too).
I didn’t. I had to tell her the truth.
I sat down on the bed next to her. “Well, Kate, look at it this way. You only put half an hour into it, right? I know you worked hard for that time, but you had four months to work on it. You know as well as I do that you could have done much better on that project. Be glad you got a passing grade, you know?”
“You don’t understand! She’s just mean!” Katie started to cry, uncontrollably.
I held my daughter. “It’s OK, kid. It’s OK. No one hates you. It’s all right.”
I like to believe that, on some level, I got through. I don’t know. I hope I did.
———-
So often in life we look at our situation and say, “This is so unfair.” We blame a teacher, a boss, fate, God, or just dumb luck for our situation. We think that the universe has it in for us.
Fact is, though, sometimes you fail because you screwed up.
It’s as true in the writing life as it is for Katie. Sometimes, writers screw up. But, how? Why do you fail as a writer? There are a few possibilities:
You’re a poor writer
There’s a chance, my friend, that you suck at writing. Maybe you can’t get the grammatical conventions straight. Maybe you can’t spell to save your life. Maybe homophones trip you up every time. Maybe you have a lousy writing voice. Whatever it is, if you don’t write well, you will fail as a writer.
Successful writers hone their craft. They soak up every bit of writing advice they can find. They master the tools of the language and they find their own unique writing voice.
You can’t or won’t sell
I said it last week over at Freelance folder:“You’ll never make it as a freelancer if you don’t get over your fears, get out of your comfort zone and knock on some doors. Your writing does no one service if it sits on your computer alone.”
You can’t be timid if you want to make it as a writer. You’ve got to toot your own horn. You’ve got to identify the value you add and sell the crap out of it. Successful writers sell.
You stink at math
If you don’t know how much time you’re spending in a given week writing compared to how much time you spend doing research, sales or bookkeeping, you will fail as a writer. Miserably. So what if you can write four $5 articles in an hour? That’s not $20 an hour. It’s probably less than $10, before taxes.
To succeed as a writer, you’ve got to keep good books. You need to learn a little bit about accounting, or you hire someone to do it. You know how much time you’re going to write in a week and you don’t underestimate how long it will take to do a project.
Life’s not fair
Sometimes, shit happens. You get sick. You lose a limb. You go through a messy divorce and become horribly depressed, unable to write. Maybe the market in your particular niche dries up, and you can’t competently write in another niche.
Sometimes, you fail because life isn’t fair. The question is, though, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to take the beatdown and whimper off? Or are you going to get mad as hell and beat failure away with a stick?
It’s all up to you. What are you prepared to do? How far are you willing to take it? Your answer will determine your potential for success after you fail.
My Blogging Journey
I’m in my fifth month here at The Writing Journey, so I suppose it’s time to reflect a bit. Five months isn’t that long, unless you consider the fact that the vast majority of blogs fold by the end of their third month. So, I’m tickled to still be here in month five, and I both excited and humbled by the success I experience here.
I get asked, on a fairly regular basis, questions about blogging, about starting a blog, and about how to run a blog. I take this as a compliment.
One of the most common sorts of questions has to do with starting other blogs. Should the blogger, for example, start a separate blog for each of his interest areas, or should he write about all of those areas in one blog?
I’m not Darren Rowse, so I can’t give you the professional blogger’s opinion on the matter. I can tell you about the journey I’ve taken in blogging, though, and how I got to where I’m at today.
The beginning blogs
I blogged on and off in a casual way for a couple of years before I got serious about blogging. I started a couple of blogs in mid-2003. I updated them sporadically, blogging daily for a week or two and then not posting again for a couple of months. These blogs were mostly personal, and aimed more at communicating with my friends and family more than anything else. There’s nothing wrong with those blogs, if that’s what you want. But that sort of blog isn’t going to build a large base of readers.
Getting serious about blogging
You would think that, as a professional Internet writer, I’d have started blogging sooner. Truth is, I was perfectly happy writing my web content. My clients weren’t looking for bloggers, so I didn’t feel the need to blog.
When I first got serious about blogging, I ran five different blogs - all in different interest areas. It was too much to keep on top of, even devoting a portion of my workday. Unfortunately, none of them were really growing.
The Writing Journey
Somewhere along the way I discovered the Blog Profits Blueprint. I’ve raved about this document elsewhere, so I won’t bother doing it again here. Suffice it to say that Yaro’s words inspired and motivated me in a big way.
Among other things, Yaro helped me to figure out that I was spreading myself way too thin. I needed to focus my energies in on making just one great blog.
That’s when I started The Writing Journey. I found myself spending more and more time on WJ, and less time on my other blogs. Within a month or so, I’d stopped updating my other blogs.
That’s when WJ really started to grow. And it’s grown exponentially since then. Every day I have a new record number of RSS subscribers. I firmly believe that wouldn’t be the case if I’d tried to keep all 5 blogs going. I also don’t think it would be the case if I’d tried to combine all of the different interest areas into one. The more focused I become on my topic, the better the blog does.
I picked back up my gaming blog around a month ago. I’ve been updating it regularly and applying what I’ve learned about promoting blogs at The Writing Journey to that blog. It’s growing faster now than it ever has, too. But The Writing Journey is still my flagship, and it’s where I devote the lion’s share of my blogging time.
The short answer
So, the short answer to the question is this: in my experience, focusing on a single blog with a single niche creates the best scenario for success. Once that blog is humming along, add another if you have the time. Don’t neglect the first one, though, and if you have to choose between them, stay with the first.
———-
Many of you readers have been at the blogging game much longer than I have. What would you add to the discussion of running multiple blogs?
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