Freelance Writer

Archive for the ‘Copy Writing’ Category

One of the tasks I often have to undertake as a freelance writer, is editing work already produced by somebody else. This can actually be quite a fun task and it allows you to take a critical look at the writing style of the original author, quite often in the past I have assimilated concepts gleaned from my editing tasks into my own writing style.

The downside of an editing job is that it is very hard to price, at one end of the scale are the simple jobs which involve correcting grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, these types of projects are great. At the nasty end of the scale are the projects which require huge amounts of re-writing of the original copy, these can often be more time consuming than writing the pie\e from scratch would.

It can be really hard to gauge which type of editing is required from a project brief, it can really be an "open the can and take a look" kind of deal, sometimes the contents are tasty, at other times you wish you could put the lid back on.

I face many challenges each day in my job as a freelance writer, one in particular used to be quite difficult to overcome. Many of my clients are based in the United States, and as such they require all of the copy I deliver to be written using American English.

As a UK native, this used to be a problem for me, there are many differences between UK English and American English, spelling and grammar are the two most obvious, but it goes deeper than this, tun of phrase, slang, sentence structure, all of these things are quite different.

I have gotten quite good at writing in the American style over the years, but recently I have been having the reverse problem. I am writing more and more for the American audience, so much so that when I am writing for my UK clients, I find myself using the American style. It is very odd to find this happening, and quite surprising in it’s own way.

One of the problems I face in my work as a freelancer writer, is that I often become inspired at the most inconvenient times, most inconvenient of these being the times I am far from a PC.

I have experimented with many portable devices in the past, nothing really fits the bill perfectly, a laptop is just too cumbersome to carry around all day, a smartphone is just impossible to use for word processing, even if it has a QWERTY keyboard. As a freelance copy writer I need a decent keyboard, not necessarily full size, but comfortable and useable.

Recently I have been experimenting with an Asus EEE PC, and I have to say it’s pretty useful, the keyboard is ok, I can type quite quickly on it, although the layout is a little strange. The major problem is the screen size, I have the 7" model, which has a native resolution of 800 x 400 pixels, just a little too small to be comfortable. My only other gripe with it, is the fact it has no built-in Bluetooth connectivity, so I have to use a dongle.

Overall it’s been great so far, so much so that I am considering switching to the new model, which has a larger screen and runs at 1024 x 800 resolution.