This post is not so much about writing per se as it is about taking control of your own life and work habits.  I’ve been working for myself for so many years that many things I do in my working day are simply taken for granted.  Work discipline is only a part of the traits that lead to financial stability in the work that you do to earn your way.  Financial stability is something we all need, irrespective of creative drive and urges, and working in a more certain environment is a prerequisite for success, financial and otherwise.

When working for yourself, there are no excuses.  There is only yourself and you are entirely self-reliant on how well you perform; clients may come and go, bills may be paid or not and you may deserve a well earned break at the end of the day or not - it is all up to you.

Writing is a pleasure for me, it also started out as an expedient way to make some money, any money, in a set of not very nice circumstances.  Today, writing is both my pleasure and my main source of income and I am not going hungry except because of my diet plans (I’ve lost a stone and half in the last month).

Here are some of the things I now take for granted but they are essential to gaining control over your working life as a writer or self-employed individual of any description.

Results matter not what goes into producing them

My first marriage ended in divorce because I was a workaholic - I would think nothing of putting in sixteen hours a day, six or seven days a week.  My income reflected the effort and my business grew rapidly until I sold it five years later.  My productivity was abysmal - once I had achieved a degree of stability in my income, I eased off the hours I was spending, mostly because my girlfriend post-separation would not let me get away with that nonsense and she was more successful financially than I was.  As much as I have a distaste for those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, she showed me how by disciplining my working effort and time, I could achieve far greater productivity than simply hewing away at the coal face.  A year later my profits tripled and I was working a basic forty to fifty hour week - working longer simply resulted in diminishing return.

Remember, it is only the result that matters in commercial terms not what you have to put in to achieve it - your customers will not give a hoot about anything else and neither should you.

Separate Private from Working Life

The two do not mix no matter what the justification.  I have a separate place to work within my home, a separate telephone line for clients, and a set time when I am going to be working unless it is for me and my pleasure.  Nothing imposes upon that unless it is absolutely necessary such as the sprog has been taken to hospital or a scheduled dental appointment appointment. 

Sort your schedule out and stick to it.  You don’t have to work nine to five, but you do need to work - writing is work; respect it as such and stick to your hours.

If you can’t or won’t do it yourself - pay someone else to do it

The thing that springs immediately to mind is the book-keeping.  I worked as an accountant many years ago and I hated it.  I dabbled with running Quickbooks to handle things but I would rather have my privates treated like a slab of cheddar with a cheese grater!

Outsource that which you cannot do yourself or will not do.  In either event, you need to ensure things run smoothly with your profit making activities.  The only thing that should stop you from making profit is your private, personal life when you are having “down time” - anything else is a waste.

Let people know what you do

If you are not going to tell people what you do, no-one else is going to unless you are paying them.  Even when you pay them, you are unlikely to recover your investment.  The best person to handle marketing is you so learn to market yourself and learn it well.  There are hungry writers and stuffed ones - in both cases, good and bad writers populate that classification.  The hungry, good writers are just no good at marketing themselves and are heading for a job at Sainsbury’s and repossession.

Learn from your mistakes but trust your own instincts

I once gave a speech on being an entrepreneur.  I said that every day I had to make decisions, some I took a lot of time over such as when deciding company strategy that committed my money to the cause.  Some I made instantly such as when chewing my rogue senior salesman out for not paying his parking fee that I got stuck with. 

How many decisions do you think I got right?

Most of them?

All of them?

None of them?

A few of them?

How many decisions I got right is immaterial - what matters is I actually took decisions and moved forward irrespective of the consequences.

Bad decisions do not exist.  You always can learn from screwing up.

The worst thing you can do is to make no decision but then you already know that or you wouldn’t be reading this.

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The three “R’s” of environmental conservation are “Reduce, Re-use and Recycle” but the application of this trio can just as easily be applied to getting your commercial portfolio built up without having to have a commission from a FTSE 100 bluechip to make you look good.

Reduce the number of writing samples you have in your portfolio that deal with your contributions to the local church magazine or poetry competition.  Commercial companies are not going to hire you on the basis of how many words you wrote nor any editorial credit you obtained for this type of publication.  When you are looking for paid work, concentrate on targetting the market that your existing portfolio reflects and reduce wasted marketing effort on completely strange and disassociated sectors.

Re-use existing work that you have.  I have been working and studying for over twenty years and have a wealth of stored documents that I have authored or had a hand in, and this includes compiling annual reports for publication with company financial accounts, tax guides summarising the Budget, a guide to contract law written by my law lecturer, numerous technical reports on personal and corporate financial matters not to mention my own meanderings.  It does not matter how old these samples are, they can be re-used and you can always polish your samples up by having them printed out on a glossy sheet of paper and some graphical work using a pop art program off the PC.  It’s all yours, use it and work related, commercially orientated writing will hold more sway with a hard bitten capitalist looking to commission some copy than a summary of the marrow competition at the village fete.

Recycle your contacts and existing clients.  I actively canvass my clients for permission to use them as referees and to use the work produced in my own marketing efforts.  Look at this as developing a closer relationship with your existing clients and you will be surprised at how many will actively look to help you get promoted.  This is in essence, good business for all concerned and the three golden rules of selling are simply - see the people, see the people and see the people.  Most of my work comes from existing clients so keep in touch with them.  I also keep every piece of work I produce as it saves on research.  I took a quickie assignment on today regarding cosmetic dentists in London and using a US commission as the basis, I made $18 for 10 minutes to produce 500 words.  Never throw anything away on your computer as you can always resell it with some slight tweaking.

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Recently someone stuck a comment on the blog about being a smart ass - referring to me I guess.  A comment is one source of reader feedback and in this case, I think it was positive as I am a smart ass and whatever my standard of writing, I got under someone’s skin enough to motivate them to comment. 

No comment is bad comment just as with publicity.

More constructively, using feedback from your readers will help you understand what you are getting right and what you are doing wrong.  This applies whether you are engaged in writing for profit or pleasure as though you may be a leader in the community of the written word, the point of putting something onto paper is to get people to read it, hopefully to think about it and be entertained or sold enough to come back for more.

Ocassionally I throw a piece of work to my ex wife and knowing her to be the no-holds barred critic of me in all aspects of my life that she is, I can be assured of an incisive opinion.  This is not some sort of self-flagellating exercise or because I like being told my work is rubbish and lacking in something.  The best results I have produced in my work have been achieved after someone has pulled my draft to pieces and given me reasons why. 

I never liked pulling literature to pieces when I was a schoolboy in those interminably dull English lessons.  I hated it in fact, not because I was not interested in the book but because it destroyed something of the tale for me; I never forgave my English teacher Mr Taylor for putting me through The Chrysalids by John Wyndham as before I had loved his book and afterwards could not bring myself to read it again, even to this day.

This sounds like a contradiction in terms between how I want my work read and how I read other peoples.  This is the difference between ERH as a reader and ERH as a writer.  I am unable to pull my own work to pieces because I write it - I’m too close to the subject matter to be objective enough.   Getting your readers to tell you why they read your work, followed your message and acted upon it, or not, is something that is invaluable if you are looking to improve your work product. 

Critics are always available, and there are a lot of doomsayers and negative heads that are only too eager to take a pop at you or your work. 

Great! 

Let these people lose on your product because if you keep a cool head, you can learn a lot from what is being said whether it is constructive or not.  I actually prefer the negative feedback and the reason is because if they have a point, and you keep an open mind, you can learn far more from someone being cruel than from someone paying you a compliment.

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Enjoying the Swiss air and cafe society, I was struck by some of the advertising for amongst other things, Toblerone (invented in Bern a hundred years ago) and for Mont Blanc pens.  With my newly polished French, I was reading an ad that countered the digital age of PC’s, mobile telephone texting and PDA’s with the idea that the tradition of actually holding a pen in your hand had far greater potential for pleasure when writing than the now commonplace typing.

Looking around at the Swiss Alps, while taking in Lake Geneva there is no excuse for not wishing to wax lyrical.  At times like this I wish I was a creative rather than a commercial writer but then I wouldn’t be able to afford one of those Mont Blanc stylos unless of course I was commercially successful as a creative - unlikely in my opinion.  Certainly Mont Blanc looks to me to be rather mundane as mountains go - it certainly does not inspire awe and majesty but it is a focus for artists and creativity aside from being the highest mountain in Europe.

One of my Swiss acquaintances worked with a Danish artist, Marco Evaristti who last year draped a huge, red flag across the mountain with “Pink State” embroidered on it.  The apparent aim was to highlight environmental concerns but the Swiss police decided their concern was what to charge him with when they arrested him for the stunt.  More recently, a group of obviously very friendly yodellers constructed a hottub at the summit and had a communal dip - the view must have been fantastic for a variety of reasons.

I’m here on a work assignment so there is something serious to my presence, but that does not mean you cannot soak in what any place has to offer.  Picking up ideas for profitable writing commissions does not mean hours of Google based research when you are prepared to take some time to listen to what the locals have to say over a coffee or a beer.  Socialising is one of my greatest pleasures but it is also a very profitable mine if you can incorporate your pleasure into your work.

Unfortunately, I am unable to afford one of those Mont Blanc pens, at least not the one I would like, so I’ll do without.  I’m also put off from making a purchasing decision because my assignment for today in this beautiful, scenic country is nothing to do with the breathtaking landscape, heady culture and life that is bubbling around but with the rather genital sounding, pearly penile papules and what’s the lowdown.  It seems almost sacriligous to have to do this here but that is a price you pay for working for American clients. 

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Read a paragraph from one of your favourite novel writer - then do the same with another.

Can you tell the difference between the two?

I like science fiction and Iain Banks is a favourite.  I also like John Grisham novels when I’m on a transatlantic flight.  the two writing styles are very different irrespective of the US/UK spellings.

The difference is their voice.

It may seem strange to ask if you have a voice as a writer - after all you are not speaking.

I am naturally a sarcastic, play the Phillistine type of individual - I always look for the twisted meaning in a conversation but there is no malice - I just like the play with words, and most of all, the humour in a conversation.  I’m also in my prime - mid forties, solvent, travelled and experienced in life - sounds like an ad in a dating site profile, but this is correct and is reflected in my writing.  Cavalier, sometimes off-hand and slightly jaded but with a glint in my eye and as has been noted already, I don’t really care what other people think about me (or my writing).

Your writer’s voice will depend a lot on your own character, but how you are in a crowd is not necessarily the real you.  I know people who are very deeply intelligent, deeply sensitive to the extent that they will cry listening to Beethoven but to the world at large, they are hard as nails.  On the other hand, I also know people who look like they would not say boo to a goose but in fact are deeply adventurous and without fear. 

When you are writing, no-one need know what your public persona is - you are free to be who and what you really are.  How your true personality comes through in your writing gives you your writer’s voice - serious, droll, witty, boring, technical, exciting and the adjectives can just go on and on.

Why is having a writer’s voice important?

Ask yourself this question - what makes John Grisham different from the legions of wannabe legal fiction writers?  What makes Iain Banks different from the hordes of sci-fi wannabe’s? 

Sure their ideas and plots are great, but no-one has a monopoly on ideas; it is how they tell their story, word for word, that holds the reader and makes them popular and commercially successful.  In short, it is their voice - develop yours and let the real you come through.  In this respect, we can look at a writer’s voice as being the relationship with their readers, probably to such an extent that without ever hearing your real voice, a reader will be able to look at your writing and say ”That’s so and so!”

Your writer’s voice is what will make you different from the crowd and eminently readable.

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