Writing For a Living Is Not For The Weak

One of the things I hear fairly often is how easy my work must be. Tossing some words on a screen and then getting paid for those words, that's just got to be the cushiest job in the world- right? WRONG!

I've been writing for a living for most of my adult life. I began as a copywriter for McCann Erickson - a college intern position. I thought I was a good writer, I'd always aced my high school and college writing assignments. The thing I remember most about that job was being yelled at by my editor, a former newspaper editor in the Jonah Jameson mold complete with chewed cigar hanging from a corner of his mouth. My proudest moment was when he didn't crumple up what I had written and thrown it at my head, but instead grunted and said "not too bad kid, you'll make a decent writer someday".

I've written weighty, well-researched papers for professional publications. I've written ad copy and site pages and emails for untold numbers of marketing clients. I've written eBooks for a dozen industries. One of the hardest bits of writing I have done was a series of kids books. Not the "see Spot run" variety but for a slightly older crowd. Working gentle social messages and exploding some long taught history myths in a clear and concise manner was far more difficult than it appears.

So after "retiring" from client work, the idea of writing blog articles on the Steem blockchain was a natural extension of something I had been doing for a living anyway. When I told friends and family what I was up to, they all thought it was the easiest job in the world and expected that I could "bang out a dozen articles a day". I tried to explain that writing a good article, especially one that presented a blockchain company or a new product, app or service was not that easy. Nor is writing a quality article something that can be done in a few minutes.

Here's what I, or any professional writer goes through to create that blog article.

1. Company Research - oh yeah research! Anytime I write about anything that isn't a personal piece, I start with hitting the website. I read everything they have on those pages, skimming any blog articles that might be included. I get a feel for the company, the people behind it, what they feel the goals of the company/product/service may be. I read the white paper and any press releases that may have been made.

2. Customer Research - But research doesn't stop there. I may have gathered information on the "thing" I will be writing about, and also gotten a feel for the goals, and direction of the company, but the next step in the research is almost more important.

The first rule of marketing is "Know Your Customer". So the next step in my research is WHO. WHO is this "thing" aimed at? WHO will benefit from it? WHO will beat down the doors to buy it?

I hit social media to see what people are saying. I read comments that have been left on blog articles in Medium, Steemit, or industry news articles. I must get inside the head of the customer because that is WHO I am writing for.

3. Outline - Now that I've gotten a good idea about the company, the product and the customer, it's time to lay out the points I want to make in the article. A rough outline of the important bits that also includes the urls to articles that my research found to be most important is the best way I've found to organize my thoughts and information.

4. Rough Draft - Next is a rough draft. What is my "hook"? What will make my article different than all the others written about this company? The last thing I want to do is a simple rehash of facts that have already been presented a zillion times. I want something fresh and new and different. Dog bites man is not new. Man bites dog - that's different and will make people sit up and take notice!

SEO also comes into play here. What are my key terms? I must construct a search bot friendly title and opening paragraph that attracts the attention of a prospective reader, and also helps with ranking the article in the SEO lists. I need to be certain my body text gets those search terms into sentences in a natural, unforced way that reads well.

5. Edit - I often leave an article to "percolate" overnight. I've found this helps me be certain that I haven't missed anything important and that I've also been clear and concise, explaining industry buzzwords that I may have used, and making each sentence flow into the next. That all thoughts are clearly expressed and defined.

I run the article through a spell checker and a grammar checker and do a word count. If the article is too long, I have two options. Cut and prune to get it to a more readable length, or expand it onto two articles.

6. Images - Now for the fun part. Every article needs images. They help break up big blocks of text and when properly used, they draw attention to important bits and sometimes help illustrate concepts that might be confusing. Finding the right image takes time. Hitting an image repository, trying various search terms and scrolling through hundreds of pictures and graphic styles can chew up an easy 30 minutes or more.

Then there is the image manipulation itself. Rarely will a graphic or picture be the right size. It often needs to be brought into an image program for cropping and resizing. There is nothing worse than having a HUGE image which will be resized in the article platform, but will still have an enormous file weight bogging down servers and whatever device the poor reader is using to absorb the article.

7. Formatting - Ah yes, the dreaded formatting. If my article is going in more than one place the odds are I will be using html in one place, markdown in another, and a mix of both in yet a third. Each platform seems to be different. WordPress allows most of what I do to be done with a button click, Steemit insists on an arcane group of symbols, and truncated html code to make things look right. Other platforms do html only. So it's rarely a cut and paste job to put an article on more than one platform.

That "easy" job not only often stretches to more than one day, it requires several different skill sets to turn out a polished article. Writing, editing, researching, SEO, coding, image manipulation - all take time and skill.

So the next time you consume an article, think about the work and effort that went into bringing you that information. I can guarantee you it took longer than an hour to put it together and present it to you!

All images used courtesy of Pixabay