I love telling people that I'm a Freelance Writer. That might sound a little crazy, but I honestly feel proud of what I do. I also love the amount of intrigue that spreads from their face to their tone of voice after I tell them. But what I don't like is the actual response of:
"Oh, do you write for newspapers?"
This has to be the automatic response of 99.99% of the people that I have ever told, and for the record: No, I do not write for newspapers. Why? Because I'm not a journalist.
I have a lot of respect for journalists, I really do - actually, I lie, there are some that I will quite happily admit are the complete scum of the Earth, but the vast majority are actually lovely people. However, journalism is not for me. I did want to be a journalist once upon a time. That was until my older brother told me that to be a journalist, I'd have to be like Gail Weathers, from Scream (played by Courtney Cox), and I knew that I wasn't a big enough bitch to pull off that role.
But no, journalism has no appeal to me. I'm too opinionated for journalism, which I was always under the impression that you had to be neutral for, but these days that appears to be getting less and less.
That - of course - isn't really the point of this post. The point is more, okay, so if I'm not writing for newspapers, what the heck am I doing every single day?
BLOGGING
As you might imagine, I spend a great deal of my time blogging, and this is what most people understand that I do. But, there are actually two forms of blogging that you'll find me doing:
For Myself:
As a writer, blogging for myself is incredibly important for several reasons:
- It gets me writing
- It allows me to share my opinion on stuff that I am passionate about
- It allows me to represent the areas that I'm passionate about, to potential clients
- It shows potential clients my writing style
For Clients:
Over the past couple of years, I've worked on several blogs for clients. Sometimes, it's fully representing them and their products, meaning that I'm pretty much the Ghostwriter. Whilst, at other times I'm being myself, sharing my personal opinions.
Other than blogging, most people really aren't sure what I do, and to be honest it varies on a day-to-basis, which is all part of the joy of the job. But, here are a few snippets of what you might find me doing:
Re-Writing Content:
Quite often, clients know what they want to say, but they don't feel that their writing is demonstrative of the product and/or service, so they write down the key points and pass them on to me, so that I can piece everything together, so that they are easy to understand, aren't too "salesy" and hopefully draw customers in.
Sometimes, I might even re-write the same thing several times. This might sound crazy to a lot of people, but when a company wants to advertise their products in different places, they need to provide each "area"/website etc with a different article, purely because search engines don't like the same copy appearing in multiple locations. This could leave to blacklisting, and for a company, this is bad news.
Web Content:
Web content comes in two varieties:
1. Content that is for use on their website: Landing page, product descriptions etc
2. Content that is used to advertise/promote their website: Articles, Press Releases etc
These two areas are probably what I do the most, for most of my clients.
THERE YOU GO
So, this is just a small snippet of what I do for my daily life, but as you can see...no magazines or newspapers around. All of my work is done remotely, across the internet but it's still possible to build some great relationships with clients no matter how you deal with them.
I know that a few writers - and of course clients too - prefer to deal with people that they can meet face-to-face, but in this job, it doesn't really make a difference.
Of course, I can't speak for other writers, and what exactly they do to earn their bread and milk every month, but this is an idea of what I personally do. I'm often asked to do other stuff as well, such as social media etc, and that is the part of the job that I love the most: never knowing what each day - or client - will bring.
