I once sat in agony as I read through a pile of project proposals. I was looking for my competition because I wanted the project that bad. I was willing to look for the one or two people I was going to have to beat to get it. When I found them, I was going to write my proposal so that it out-shined the others in all ways.

The humor of it all is that those proposals I was reading through didn’t reflect on me at all. They reflected on the other people who were trying to get my project. I should have been grateful that they were awful. But, I was still in agony because of what I was reading.

These are no lie, no punches pulled examples of the proposals I fished through:

“lets talk in detail.company profile attached.”

No, I’m not kidding. This proposal took all of five seconds to write…errors included. The first letter isn’t capitalized. A space doesn’t exist between the first and second sentence. And that just gets me started.

This project was for a bid of about two thousand to three thousand dollars for a month worth of work. If it were a five dollar job, I could understand. But even then, if you want the job put your back into it.

Doing a project proposal is about providing a potential client with enough information to make a decision about you. If I can’t get more than two sentences out of you in your proposal and then they have errors in them on top of it all, you’ve made your statement loud and clear. I don’t want you to do my work.

Another example:

“i can do it plz check ur pmb You can expect professional work from me”

One of my other blog posts actually addresses the issue found here. In addition to the issues raised in the previous example, this proposal confuses formal from informal online dialog. A chat room or a friendly instant message can have “i,” “plz,” and “ur” in it. That’s not a problem because your audience expects you to get with the program, use slang and save yourself time.

But, a potential client doesn’t want to see that you get confused between informal and formal communication. Using informal expressions in your project proposal makes the statement that such errors will also be found in the document they want you to write.

So, how do you put together a professional proposal? Well, let’s go ahead and take a look at that in my next post. We’ll start by showing you why it’s important to write professional proposals.

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See how I did that? Drew you right into my conversation didn’t I? That’s one way you begin a conversation with your intended audience.

No, I’m not giving away confidential secrets of the government. I’m not about ready to divulge the ancient secrets of a sacred society that lives among us as quiet and beneficial members. I don’t want to let you know the meaning of life just yet. It is merely a suggestion for the way you communicate a message to your intended audience. But nonetheless, I drew you into my conversation when I wrapped up Part I of Beginning a Conversation with Your Intended Audience published December 5, 2007.

When you read that blog entry published earlier, you instantly thought, “Shucks, I have to wait to get the beat.” You may not have said it quite that way, but I’m paraphrasing your thoughts for you. Yes, you resumed with the rest of your day. You haven’t been sitting still waiting patiently for Part II. It didn’t ruin your day or anything like that at all. But, it did make you curious.

You returned today to get the secret. And even though I told you that I have no secret to tell you, it still subconsciously nagged at you because it aroused your curiosity. If there’s no secret, then you want to know what is it that you haven’t learned yet or may have forgotten a long time ago. And if you haven’t been paying attention, you missed it once again.

When you stir up someone’s curiosity, you draw them into your conversation. You know something your readers don’t. Even if they do know what you are about to tell them, you know the answer to the question and the answer is nagging at them. That implies that you raised a question.

Raising a question is definitely a great way to begin a conversation. But, and this brings you back to a very important point I made in Part I, you have to know your intended audience. You have to be able to strike a chord with them. You have to raise a concern that would get them interested in what you have to say.

If your intended audience is an artist, then raise a question that would really get the attention of artists. But, keep it real! An artist will not join the conversation if you raise a question about something base and unchallenging. Some questions just don’t stir enough interest. But if you can tap into the heartbeat of the artist community, you can turn a question into a group activity.

In order to really raise a good question, stir up some controversy. The artistic world is full of controversy, so that’s a bit easy. But if you want to communicate a message in a rather non-controversial field, you have to create the controversy for yourself. So, are you making things up for yourself? Not really.

What you are doing is looking at the issues, finding an angle and giving your readers something to really chew on so that they get your message entirely. In fact, this is so easy that I don’t think there is a field in which someone wants to write that they can’t find some controversial topic.

Let’s give this theory a try! Let me give you some examples to start. In the field of carpentry, is there a best hammer? Could that issue raise some controversy? In the field of bubble gum, is there any that won’t rot your teeth? Could that issue raise some controversy?

Task: Find the most boring or non-controversial topic and explore any angle that can raise controversy. In other words, you are trying to find a field that has no controversy whatsoever. I’m sure someone if not I will come up with a controversial topic in any field.

Method: Blog comments.

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Try to begin a conversation with your intended audience. This isn’t a trick. It’s a way of thinking. When you write, you are intending to communicate a message to someone. But, some writers either forget that basic premise or they just never knew it in the first place.

A beginning writer or one who will never be any good forgets about the audience. Sometimes, they don’t even have an intended message. When writing’s sole purpose is to communicate a message to a certain audience, it astounds me that those two things can slip from a writer’s mind while… “writing.” But, it happens.

A great writer or one who intends to get better at it will actually consider audience and message first. Yes, the message is obviously most important. But, considering the audience offers the guidelines you will need in order to write effectively. The intended audience can be teenagers, women, minorities, the middle class, the rich or any other category you can imagine.

If you read any magazine, you will easily figure out who the intended audience is supposed to be. Without trying to offend anyone, here are a few examples. People is basically for homebodies who like gossip, Time is for the socially aware in about the mid-age range, YM is obviously for young girls (it is right in the name) and Cosmopolitan is for women. Notice how I mentioned who the intended audience is “supposed” to be? Anyone can read Cosmo, but it’s going to be written for the female population.

When you write, think of yourself as someone who is pulling an audience to you and attempting to tell them something very important. Yes, there are writers who write only for the purpose of hearing themselves talk basically. But, think of yourself as an authority on something. You are an authority on the message you intend to communicate.

No, that doesn’t make you the smartest person in the world. Being the “authority” doesn’t have to be some burdensome, all-empowering position. You have a message and that in itself is enough to give you some authority. You have some insight on a topic. You know how to do something. Your message could be as simple as how to bake a pie, but you are the expert at the moment and your purpose is to inform your readers your best practices in baking a pie.

What brings your writing to life is if you can engage your audience and this is where you begin a conversation with your readers. This isn’t a trick, I said it before. But, it is important. It’s a set of techniques. It’s not a secret or it’s not intended to be a secret, but the fact is that many writers don’t know how to engage an audience and draw them into your conversation.

Now that I have your attention…now that I have you expecting to learn a secret…this is to be continued…

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Writing professionally, you run into things you may not have seen in awhile. The world is getting so informal and unprofessional that some of the old things go flying out the window. It takes a minute to catch up on concepts you learned years ago and get ready to apply them today.

The difference between MLA and APA is just one of those things. In fact, you just might at this moment be thinking what in the world they even are. Some of you might have a faint memory that they are documentation guidelines. But, you might not be able to remember much more than that.

If you have any kind of document to present in whatever venue you need, whether your boss needs a research journal or your professor needs an essay, you have guidelines to follow. They may have given you some guidelines on their own. But, you also have a style that your paper needs to conform to upon presentation. That style could either be MLA or APA.

MLA Style

The Modern Language Association (MLA) was formed in the late eighteen hundreds as a forum for the study of literature. Lasting throughout the years, it has become the authority on the format for documents written in scholarly pursuit. College students writing English papers or professional writers making their contribution to literature would use the MLA style.

The MLA publishes the MLA Style Manual, which answers every question for how to format your paper. If you want to know how to set the margins, it has the answer. It will tell you how to space your document and create a cover page. It will tell you how to paginate your pages and where to put the appendices. But, I think the most important role the MLA Style Manual serves is how to cite the works of others when you use them in your paper.

Plagiarism isn’t just a blatant disrespect for the work of others. It continues into cases where a work wasn’t cited properly. If you mention an author’s name in the paragraph where you are discussing that author’s work, you only need to add that work of literature to the “Works Cited” page at the end of your document. But, the guidelines are technical regulations so that there are no confusions. Plagiarism can definitely come into play when you quote or paraphrase another writer’s words, but the source of those words is unclear to the reader.

It might be considered a small infraction to you when you miss a period or a comma in your listing of a work you cited. And authors could really care less about a small period in your “Reference” list even though it’s a significant part of the MLA Style of citation. They will make a note that you don’t know how to pay attention and don’t know what you’re doing, which takes away from your overall credibility. But, they really don’t care when you make a small mistake like that. What they get upset about is when you blur the lines and you don’t make it clear that you used their work to support your own. Of course, there is more to it. But, when you are writing a paper in the pursuit of Academia, it is my personal opinion that this is the main concern in the field of scholars.

APA Style

The American Psychological Association (APA) is an equally authoritative organization based out of Washington, D.C. USA. Among the many things APA does, it publishes what is profoundly looked upon as The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. It offers guidance for writers too, but it governs an entirely different body of writers.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is an editorial style manual for writers in the fields of the social and behavioral sciences. Just as in MLA Style, APA Style will tell you how to punctuate your paper and how to add tables. It offers guidance for present statistics and select headings. But, its main thrust again is to help writers properly cite works they use to support their own papers.

A well-written paper is not one that stands alone. This is debatable, but I don’t think one novel thought exists anymore. If you have a thought that is insightful or groundbreaking, I’m sure others have thought along those lines before. It’s called cumulative thinking. But, that’s not a bad thing.

When you write a paper that contributes your thoughts to the scientific community, there has to be thousands of other works that support your groundbreaking work. In other words, you’ve reviewed their works and come to your own conclusions. That’s your contribution. So, learn how to give other writers credit and get it right.

There are other editorial styles for formatting your paper. They include Associated Press, Chicago and Oxford among others. It is in my distinguished experience that if you work in journalism, the Associated Press Stylebook is the one that governs you. If you belong to an organization or work in a field like anthropology that prefers The Chicago Manual of Style, then that’s your style guide. Likewise, the Oxford Style to Guide is the UK’s equivalent to US’s Chicago Manual.

But as far as the US is concerned, MLA or APA is the editorial style you’ll most likely use. You should know what is required of you. If you haven’t been told, then follow the guidelines I just gave you. MLA is in the field of Academia. APA governs social and behavioral sciences. I guess this blog entry implicitly welcomes a view from the UK, one I cannot provide since I am a US based writer.

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I remember the first thing I wrote. It was when I was about six years old. I wrote a poem about people slipping on banana peels and oil slicks. It was called “Slick Move” and it launched my writing career.

I’ve written all my life. With everything I was doing throughout my life, I was always a writer first. Throughout middle high and high school, I wrote short stories and poems. I tried writing a book, but it was a short story at best. My attention span couldn’t last long enough to write a complete three hundred page novel.

When I joined the Marine Corps right after high school, I wrote the entire time. I made general observations of different sights I saw. I kept snap shots of my life in the Marine Corps and they’re still lying around somewhere waiting to be put together in some kind of fashion.

By the time I was discharged, I thought I was a stellar writer and I put myself through college for a degree in English. The things I had to read broadened my experiences. But, writing really opened my eyes. I wrote my papers so fast and always was awarded good grades. I kept every paper. I look back on them now and I can easily see how amateur they are.

That’s the journey of a writer. College for me ended years ago. But, even things I’ve written since then seem amateur to me. I can look back on something I wrote only two years ago and just rip right through it, shred it from end to end to make it better.

Yes, I can see the value in each work. I can see a potential that some day, all of the little things I’ve written can be put together for a greater piece of work. But, I can also see a growing. It’s almost like taking quantum leaps. But, it’s not just in the quality of the work.

Years ago when I first started freelancing, I could write an article rather fast. It was just like writing an essay in college. If I had a topic, I had a paper. But, requirements are rather demanding. You can’t make a living off of just one article. You have to keep writing.

Some clients who had hired me wanted two or three articles a week. It was hard for me to manage, especially after several weeks. I was running out of topics. I felt like I was saying the same things over and over. I was hitting a brick wall and I was getting my work in at the last minute instead of ahead of time like I prefer to do.

I remember my first book. It made me sweat a little. I had the topic and the outline. All I had to do was follow the outline and fill in the gaps with viable information. But, it was a grueling project. It took a year for me to compile the research and write the book. That’s how much time I was given and that’s how much time I took.

But now, I can write a book in a week no problem. I can’t guarantee the quality of the book after just one week. But, I would have about two hundred to three hundred pages no problem. Put the book up for a few days and then go back to edit the work. It would turn out just fine.

I can write an article in an hour. When I really want to put some backbone and elbow grease into it, writing an article can take about three to four hours. But when I have all the information I need and I sit down to write, I don’t even need an hour to put it all together. I’ve been known to write an article in about twenty minutes before.

I know this comes off as one big brag session or resume, but it has a purpose. The more I wrote, the better I became. Writing is just like anything else. The more you do something, the easier it gets or at least the better you get at doing it.

The first house you’ll ever have to frame overwhelms you and makes you feel as if it’s impossible. You frame your first house and you think of all the work that is involved. It was tough. It was tricky at times. You’re not ready for your next one yet because you’re thinking of all the work that was involved.

But, two or three years passes and you’ve framed ten to fifteen houses. It’s easy now. You can do it without a problem. You’ve grown.

In writing, the only way to get better is to put your pen to the paper. Write and write. Never stop writing. You’ll see the changes. The amount of work a client gives you might seem overwhelming at first, but years later you can do it with your eyes closed. You might think you’ll never meet a deadline and years later you’re wondering why your clients are giving you so much time.

Your papers are getting red marks all over them. Years later, you are perfect. You can correct yourself. You can pick up on your own strengths and weaknesses. You have taken the writer’s journey. You’ll be just fine.

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