Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone Can Be Refreshing (and Lucrative)

Let's face it - we all love to write about what we know. It's much easier to wax lyrically on the familiar than to mentally stretch ourselves beyond our immediate area of expertise.

Yet we're interested in our topic and go that extra mile for our clients. They benefit and so do we: they obtain the information they need and we add to our database of potential articles. Not to mention improving our research skills.

If that were as far out of my comfort zone as I needed to stray, life would be very easy. Just do some fascinating research about an equine topic, write an article and send it as a .doc file via email to the client.

Which might keep life easy, but would it be satisfying?

As absorbing as the written word can be, readers need more to hold their interest, and that means photos. Fulfilling my duties as the Equestrian Writer for the DC Examiner.com has forced me to learn where to find and how to take good photos. Initially this was tough and I found the whole process arduous. But now I enjoy the challenge. Not only that but I've learned how to use publishing software to upload articles and photos and add hyperlinks. All foreign territory to me a year ago.

And there I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when I was asked to write a proposal for a sales letter project. Copywriting is an area I've always admired from a distance but which existed far beyond even the extreme edges of my comfort zone. But I thought 'why not'?

I launched into a lot of research, including the brilliant articles at http://www.copyblogger.com/ and began to write. I found it both hard work and fun and to my delight the proposal was accepted. I enjoyed writing the sales letter and the client is very happy with the result.

Having already written a few ebooks of my own I then accepted my next challenge: writing one for a client. My own books only consist of the written word, so I again had to learn new skills: incorporating photos and pointing arrows into the text. I sent the finished product to the client and waited anxiously for a reaction. I'd done my level best, but self-doubt was creeping in. Imagine my relief when the client expressed delight with the book!

And now I am making the movie to go with the book. As if I haven't stretched myself enough already.... But  I've grasped an important point: working outside my comfort zone keeps me interested in my work. Plus I'm no longer a one-trick pony. For an equine writer this is not a bad thing!

Keeping Positive

This past month I've been contributing two articles a week to a client who put me on a month's trial to see how I did. By the middle of next week I'll know whether I shall be invited back or not.

All the articles I submitted have been published, and each of them has drawn favorable comments from readers. Whether or not I get to write any more, it's been a privilege to feel that I've made a positive impact on riders' lives with the helpful hints I've learned through personal experience, and a real boost to my writing ego to have readers put the effort into letting me know about it.

Let's see what next week brings!

Writing Ideas and How to Manage Them

One of these days I suppose I shall get writer's block, but I don't see it coming any time soon! Whenever I'm writing about something, another idea pops into my head. I jot it down on the nearest piece of paper - which is usually the top corner of today's crossword page of the Washington Post - and promptly lose it.

I absolutely hate the administrative side of writing!! And I doubt whether I'm alone in this. I love creating articles, ebooks and books for print, but keeping track of everything is a nightmare. Yet I have to do it if I'm to know what my earnings are, tell the taxman that I really did spend more than I made, and not post the same photos as I did last week when uploading a new article this week.

So last week I bought a bunch of files. Using some horse stickers I was given for Christmas (some people in my family don't realize that I'm a grown woman now who's moved beyond that stage!) I am decorating these files to denote that they are horsey ones. (Maybe I haven't grown out of that stage after all.) I have duly put a white label on each spine and cover to sort out the various projects I'm working on.

In the file which also reassures me that I have, finally, saved all my published works on one USB device which I had better not lose, there is now a section labelled 'ideas.' The over riding idea is to keep that scruffy crossword page even after I've finished the daily puzzle, and take it home for transfer of the ideas jotted on it to the idea section of my new file.

Please wish me luck in this endeavor!