Bowerman notes that no how-to copywriting book can truly prepare a fledgling freelance copywriter for taking the big leap and and really doing it for a living. It’s like standing at the base of Mount Everest, climbing gear in hand, and looking up at the cloud-covered peak as a ticker-tape of uncomfortable questions runs through your mind. Can I do this? What if I take the wrong step? What if the wind picks up? What if I get stuck at the halfway point?

Heck, I still have the occasional Everest Day myself, even after 14 years in the business. You never grow fully immune to them. But you do learn to trust your skills and instincts — and that’s enough to keep your feet moving up that mountain slope.

If we learn by doing, then we learn confidence by doing many times. For instance, what’s the most common fear out there? It’s public speaking. (Or maybe it’s death; I get those two confused a lot.) Most people dread public speaking, and some have an absolute terror of facing an audience.

What do these people do cure their phobia? They face audiences, and they talk. Groups like Toastmasters provide a safe, supportive environment for people to practice their public speaking skills, giving speech after speech until they know they’ve got what it takes. They may never love it — but they know they can do it.

Writing is like that. When we start out, we’re terrified of the blank page because it offers no safety net, no guidelines. What if we write badly? What if we write nothing? What if we miss the deadline? What if what if what if?

Ray Bradbury suggested that writers start their careers by churning out thousands of words a day, just to shake out the bugs of inexperience as mercifully quickly as possible. In his Zen in the Art of Writing he says: “There is no failure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tighten up, become nervous, and therefore destructive of the creative process.”

So there’s only one way to gain confidence as a writer. Write. A lot. Write until it becomes second nature. Most importantly, finish what you start. Complete enough writing jobs and over time those nagging doubts will lose some of their power over you. You’ve done it before. You’ll do it this time.

Hey, it’s just a big hill with snow on it, right?

For more about me, my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Ever wonder why that is?

Sure, it’s easy to make vague references to practice making perfect and the development of one’s writing “chops,” but what are we really talking about here? What is it about writing every day that makes the words come faster and better? What really happens between the ears of an experienced writer that makes the fingers fly?

I stumbled across a fascinating article by CUNY Writing Fellow Carlos Penaloza that offers some possible answers. Penaloza refers to several scholarly studies indicating that habitual activities actually rewire the brain, creating new biochemical pathways that make the activity progressively easier with repetition. The brain literally remodels itself based on what we do and how often we do it.

Why can that pole vaulter sail over the bar every time? Well, because he’s talented. But aside from that, he’s done it a zillion times more than you or I have. He’s trained his brain to issue the precise instructions his body needs to perform the vault at top efficiency. So it goes with writing — or any other occupation.

What’s more, it seems that habitual everyday writing makes it easier for us to finish a writing project once we start. I’ve rescued countless clients who set out to write their own marketing copy, only to get hopelessly stuck at some point in the proceedings. They knew what they meant to say, they certainly had the intelligence and eloquence to say it well, but they hadn’t sailed through choppy writing waters often enough to do much more than lash themselves to the mast and hope things work themselves out — a good way to end up in the middle of nowhere.

So when you hire a professional writer who bangs the keys every day, you’re employing the most efficient possible solution to your writing needs. A couple hours of a professional’s time will yield better results and cost you less than losing ten or twenty hours of expensive downtime to rusty writing neurons. The practiced writer’s brain is a high-speed writing machine that delivers quality work on a deadline. And best of all, it’s available for rental.

You can get inside this writer’s head by visiting www.reynoldswriting.com.

Well, putting aside mundane physical issues such as carpal tunnel syndrome or eyestrain for the moment, the average freelancer faces all kinds of emotional and financial bumps and bruises in the call of duty. Freelancers who focus on pitching stories or submitting fiction manuscripts have built up many layers of calluses from rejection after rejection — it’s part of the job description, regardless of writing quality. In the marketing world, copywriters seeking new clients may find themselves negotiating hidden booby-traps. Over the years I’ve gotten to the point where I can see some of these potential dangers lurking on the horizon from pretty far away, though once in a while I still get tripped up.

Anyway, here are a few red flags I’ve learned to identify. Hopefully they will help writers steer clear of bad situations while also helping well-intentioned business owners avoid throwing up one of these flags inadvertently.

“We just thought we’d pick your brain on the subject.” This usually means you’re being asked to contribute your expertise for free. You’ll have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, how much information you’re comfortable offering up on a writing project without the meter running. True, the client or prospect can’t use that information as well as a professional writer could, so if they’re smart they’ll hire you to do the actual heavy lifting anyway. But look out for the client who throws out this comment and then hangs on your every word, notepad in hand, and pumps you for an increasing level of detail about exactly what you would do — or you may not end up doing it.

“If this works out for everybody, we have tons of future work for you.” Expect a request for a severely discounted rate or perhaps even a deferred payment, with the “tons of future work” hanging in the air like some great mythical creature that’s certain to appear if you just make the proper sacrifice to it — that sacrifice being an acceptable pay rate. Stick to your guns. If the client truly does have a serious need for your future services, he will understand their value and pay accordingly.

“Write this sample story to show us how you’d write the assignments we’d be sending you.” While some of these requests are no doubt legit, it would be easy for a fly-by-night company to suck in a bunch of free “samples” like a literary Hoover — without actually hiring any of the submitting writers or paying for the articles. Your best bet is with the company that asks for a couple hundred words about your family dog, favorite tree, or some other topic that obviously doesn’t benefit them except as a sample of your style.

Don’t get me wrong, the outstanding majority of my writing experiences have been good ones. But recognizing a few of those red flags when they do pop up sure helps. You don’t have to be paranoid — just keep your eyes open.

Visit my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Shizuku loves books. While her classmates occasionally hit the school library to do their homework or prepare for their high-school entrance exams, she’s there every day reading story after story. She also enjoys writing poems and song lyrics for her friends, and they seem impressed by her skill. But that’s as far as it goes, until one day she realizes that someone named Amasawa has already checked out all the books she’s currently reading.

Intrigued by this mysterious stranger with similar literary tastes, she decides to find out who he is. Seiji Amasawa turns out to be a classmate she’s never even talked to before, except to trade the occasional insult. The real surprise occurs when she learns that this “typical teenager” builds violins — and he’s serious enough about it to apply to a school in Cremona, Italy, the Mecca of violin making. As she slowly falls for this ambitious boy, she realizes that she’s reached a crossroads in her life. He has a dream — does she? He’s going halfway across the world for 10 years’ hard study to become a violin maker — is she ready to get serious about becoming a writer?

Shizuku makes a decision to push herself by writing her first full-length story in the two months that Seiji is visiting Italy for his initial evaluation as an apprentice. Anyone who has ever pushed themselves into uncharted territory will recognize the image of the girl slumped over her desk 24 hours a day, pen in hand, neglecting her schoolwork, not eating, not (intentionally) sleeping, and scared to death she doesn’t have it in her after all. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she hates the story’s second half, she’s ready to burst into tears when she hands the manuscript to Seiji’s kindly old grandpa to read — but she’s done it. She’s a writer.

At some point, this movie seems to say, we have to take that first step forward into the danger zone of What Am I without waiting for the bright light of certainty to illuminate our path. I believe that’s true. It’s true for writers, violin makers, entrepreneurs, or anyone else who seeks to transform his or her life.

This movie reminded me of how scary it can be to write that first story or attempt that new thing, whatever it may be. Writing is frightening. Going for what we want is frightening. Living is frightening — if we’re doing it right.

The smaller man yells, “What do you mean, I’m fired?”

Curtain. End of scene — or is it the beginning?

Yes, the opening paragraph sets a tone — it prepares the audience for a looming crisis in the conversation, gives us background information, and so on. A playwright or novelist could, in fact, draw that scene out for several minutes or pages to build suspense, especially if the audience has an idea of what’s coming to the poor dope in the chair.

Or we could do this:

Lights up. “What do you mean, I’m fired?”

Which opening gets our attention faster and propels us into the scene more forcefully?

One of the most useful things my playwriting instructors used to harp about was to “start in the middle.” Atmosphere and exposition have their uses, but the story doesn’t start until something happens.

Marketing writing sometimes suffers from this kind of foot dragging. I think we have it drilled into us when we’re writing those five-paragraph essays in school: “I will now talk about this, and I will support my thesis with these paragraphs, and in summary here’s my conclusion.” It’s linear, it’s clear, and it’s easy to grade. But it’s also predictable, and if you always know what’s coming next in a marketing piece, you might as well stop reading it and get back to work.

It’s fun to tease readers that something big is coming soon if they’ll just be patient and bear with you, but they may not feel like waiting for the drum roll. If your readers or website visitors aren’t sticking around for the exciting part, try dropping them right into the exciting part instead. Save the boring part for — well, nothing, actually. Boring doesn’t belong in marketing, so throw the boring part out. Fill your audience in on the details after you’ve hooked them, because without the hook, I guarantee you the details won’t matter.

Curtain.

INNER CRITIC
You wrung him out like a rag today.

SUPEREGO
Oh, pish-tush. A 17-hour day is nothing to an entrepreneur who truly cares about meeting his deadlines.

CREATIVE SPARK
I don’t feel well.

INNER CRITIC
I don’t blame you. I saw what you did today.

CREATIVE SPARK
I did great things. Okay, good things. Okay…Anyway, who can get anything done when he’s being chased all over the frontal lobes by a sadist wielding a hammer?

INNER CRITIC
Wimp. It was a foam rubber Whack-a-Mole mallet, and you know it.

CREATIVE SPARK
I don’t care what it is, it’s distracting.

INNER CRITIC
Do you even have a clue about what my job is?

CREATIVE SPARK
Well, what about my job? What about that?

INNER CRITIC
You give me a pain, you really do. Always leaping up out of nowhere with some half-cocked idea. Every time you throw a lightning bolt I have to shoot the stupid thing down. It’s exhausting. The mallet’s better than you deserve.

SUPEREGO
Stop this bickering, both of you. It reflects poorly on the literary art. Vigilance and work ethic count for far more than any petty internal squabbles. In fact….what time is it?

EGO
4 A.M.

SUPEREGO
Time for me to wake him up and make him wonder if he ran the spell-check on the draft he sent tonight.

INNER CRITIC
Hey, while he’s up, lemme at him for a minute.

CREATIVE SPARK
You’ve had enough fun for one day. Sit down.

INNER CRITIC
He had no business feeling good about that thing. No business. I didn’t even mention the clumsiness of the organization. The pacing was poorly judged too.

CREATIVE SPARK
How am I supposed to spring him into action tomorrow after you two have had your way with him all night?

SUPEREGO
I simply feel that it’s a service provider’s duty to check his work again. And again. And again. He appreciates it, deep down. It makes him feel responsible.

CREATIVE SPARK
It makes him feel sleepy.

INNER CRITIC
Feeling the pressure, are we? Maybe he’ll decide to just stay in bed tomorrow.

SUPEREGO
No, I won’t have that. I’m make sure he notices that utility bill as soon as he wakes up.

CREATIVE SPARK
I won’t allow it either. You want thunderbolts? I’ll show you thunderbolts! And just you try shooting them down once he’s on his third cup of coffee. Just you try!

INNER CRITIC
Yeah? Well, you just wait till he’s completely awake and gets a second look at his work from the night before. Game over, pal! Game freakin’ over!

ID
QUIET UP THERE! I’M TRYING TO WORK!

In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a global scribe-fest in which writers and non-writers alike clear their desks, warm up their computers, and fry their minds for the entire 30 days of the month. Their mission: Write a short novel of at least 50,000 words. And amazingly enough, last year over 20,000 masochistic souls managed to beat the midnight deadline on the last day and claim their prize — a listing on the Winner’s Page and a certificate verifying that they have, in fact, written a bona-fide novel.

Okay, so there’s no publisher’s contract or new car or big check awaiting the winners. The fact that they climbed the mountain is the true reward. Sometimes it takes a serious challenge like NaNoWriMo to get the wheels turning. (And feel free to jeer at me because I didn’t enter. I sort of had this copywriting thing going on. And I’m lazy. Maybe next year.)

So, how do these folks sit down and bang out a novel in a month? Well, here’s their secret — they sit down and bang out a novel in a month. That’s pretty much it, as far as I can tell. Participants are encouraged not to bring in pre-outlined material or drafts they’ve already started. NaNoWriMo isn’t about crossing every T and dotting every I on your beloved dream project, and you couldn’t manage that in a month’s time anyway. NaNoWriMo is about tapping the keys madly for 30 days, regardless of the results.

As challenging as it may be to chain yourself to a desk for that period of time, your computer’s online playland makes it even harder to stay focused. Some writers use specials tools to narrow their distractions. Software applications such as Dark Room or Writeroom, for instance, turn the entire screen into a blank page — no browser begging for attention, no email waving its little flags at you. For the really hardcore cases there’s Typewriter, which allows for — well, not much. No backspacing, no deleting. All you can do is keeping going forward, mistakes and all.

Why write 50,000 words of probable drivel? By doing so, you drop yourself deep into the creative process and keep yourself there for a month — a powerful experience. You eliminate that inner editor who usually stands over your shoulder and prevents you from trying new or crazy things. Best of all, you prove to yourself that you can meet that deadline and write that book. Maybe later you can rewrite it into a good book, or maybe not. But the book exists now, and you wrote it.

Congratulations to this year’s intrepid word warriors. Now, who’s in for next year?

Don’t be silly, you say. One naturally assumes that if you’ve set out to write something, then you must enjoy writing. Yes?

Not necessarily. You may be pressed into a writing assignment you have no desire to fool with, but the need exists, the deadline is established, and your colleagues have found some way of magically excusing themselves from the job. Non-writers in particular hate being being saddled with a writing assignment, and that’s completely understandable. But what about those of us who actually choose to take on writing projects? Obviously we live for the thrill of sitting at our desks, tapping the keys for hours one end, day in and day out, with the occasional extra excitement of staring at the wall and wondering what in the world comes next.

Yeah.

Sometimes writing is fun, or at least painless. I sit down, relax for a moment, writing comes out, and before I know it the workday is over and I have a completed draft, ready for submission. I like it when that happens. But there are plenty of assignments where I’m pushing my way through quicksand, one 2-ton foot at a time, wishing I were anywhere else, doing anything else in the world. Sometimes just getting started, just going to the desk and turning the computer on, feels like a long march to the gallows. I just know there can’t be anything good awaiting me at the end of that road. Oh, and the weather outside looks awfully nice today….

How could a professional writer possibly feel that way about his chosen profession? Well, for starters, writing is hard. Even for a pro, the responsibility of writing to a certain standard, every time and on a deadline, can challenge the self-confidence and cause “stage fright” in the form of writer’s block. Also, anyone who does the same thing every single day is likely to get a little restless now and again. Even when I’m writing on a wide range of subjects from one day to the next, the routine is the same. Sit down. Think. Write. Review. Write some more. Review. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And then there are just some days that aren’t writer-friendly — maybe you’re sick, or tired, or worried about other things.

When you’re a professional, though, none of that matters. Writing is a job. If you work a standard 9 to 5 job, you’re expected to show up on time, do what you’re supposed to do when you’re supposed to do it, and continue to behave that way on a daily basis, or you won’t have that job very long. Same with writing. If I expect to earn any money, I’d better gain a reputation as a reliable professional who produces quality material on schedule. I’ve written through injuries, influenza, and even a migraine that made it all but impossible to read what I was writing. Why? Because that’s what I’m paid to do.

Beyond economic necessity, though, why does a writer write? There are as many correct answers to that question as there are individual people. Some writers simply enjoy “having written” — the final accomplishment justifies what for them is an unpleasant or tedious process. Others genuinely do live to ride that creative train, enjoying the moment-by-moment transformation of nothing into something. And some of us, believe it or not, have no idea why we write. It’s just something we’ve always done, like eating or breathing. There’s no “because” to it at all. We write because we can’t help it.

I guess I can see now why there’s no book on how to enjoy writing. Either you do or you don’t. The main thing is to do it well — or hire someone who can.

It’s a fair question. But I stand by my original statement.

I’ve seen this phenomenon in action. Several of my best clients are terrific public speakers. They can light up a room with their personal charisma, and from their opening remarks they have audiences hanging on their every word. But their writing is no match for their speaking. Now, these people don’t suddenly lose their marbles when they sit down to write. They don’t forget all their captivating stories or their gripping message. But they find themselves in a different world, facing a virtual audience instead of a live one. Hands must replace the voice. The rules of the game have changed.

What makes writing such a different skill set from speaking? Here a couple of the main points that occur to me:

Inflection. How many times have you been accused of sounding angry or hurt or sarcastic in an email when you thought you were simply communicating? Chances are, if your friend had heard you say those same words, your emotional state would never have been misinterpreted. No wonder emoticons are so popular — they’ve probably saved many a friendship!

Writing requires a very skilled and subtle use of emotional cues — end a sentence a bit too abruptly, and you may “sound” curt or indifferent; add one too many exclamation points, and you may seem enraged instead of enthusiastic. A writer has to learn this emotional vocabulary, just as an actor or public speaker has to learn the many shadings of tone and pitch that bring color to his performances.

Inflection applies to body English as well. A speaker’s stance and gestures can communicate as deeply as his words. In writing, the words have to carry the full load.

Pace. Time plays out differently in the written world than in the spoken world. I’m no speed reader, but I know I read much faster than normal people talk. Examine your own reading habits sometime — do you go word by word, or do you scan big globs at a time in a flash? Now imagine those words being spoken at the same speed you just read them. It’d be like listening to a recording on fast-forward — you’d hardly be able to make it out. Yet that’s how people receive written information, especially on the Internet, where speed-browsing has become a way of life.

(That’s one of the great challenges of writing web content, by the way — hitting the reader with exactly what he’s looking for so quickly that he stops in mid-browse to read on.)

Spoken communication relies on linear time as a communication tool. The dramatic pause, the sudden leap forward, or the slow drawl all add dramatic punch a speech. Written communication uses tempo changes as well, but the total effect still exists in a compressed time zone.

There are other differences between speaking and writing, to be sure. Maybe I’ll expand on the subject in a future article, or maybe you’d like to contribute your own insights. I’d keep going, but my throat is getting tired….

I sat at my computer desk, utterly convinced that my writing career was over. Time constraints, fatigue, stress, the sniffles, and lack of familiarity with the subject matter had all conspired to dry my brain into an empty husk. I had absolutely nothing left to offer. Writing the article was simply not possible.

I then proceeded to write a very good article, finishing ahead of schedule.

What happened? What magical incantation or secret Eastern mental technique did I employ to go from zero to sixty creatively? The truth is, I didn’t really do much of anything. I just started writing, having despaired of producing anything good or even competent. I just sort of doodled, and a finished article emerged.

But maybe “just doodling” is the key, not only to overcoming writer’s block, but to conquering procrastination in general. I’m convinced, first of all, that writer’s block does exist, though some very prolific writers continue to deny this (mainly on the grounds that they’ve never had it). I’ve experienced many bleak hours of sitting at a keyboard with absolutely no way to start, or continue, or finish, and countless other creative professionals out there know exactly what I mean. It’s just a particular form of procrastination, which in turn is a reaction to anxiety. We dread applying ourselves and seeing less-than-good results, because the perceived reward doesn’t equal the perceived effort. Perfectionists suffer when they produce imperfection.

So what can we do? We can give ourselves permission to fail. We can give up and say, “Well, whatever. I’m scheduled to write, so I’ll just scribble some notes and maybe some of it will be useful later on.” That’s pretty much what I did on the article. I knew I couldn’t write so I settled for “putting a few thoughts down,” and before I knew it, those few thoughts had transformed themselves into a finished, ready-to-print piece of writing. I stopped caring about perfection for a moment, and in doing so I deactivated my inner critic — which freed me to just write, instead of writing and editing simultaneously. You can’t edit what hasn’t been written yet, not without putting yourself into a feedback loop of inactivity.

So my suggestion is, the next time you don’t know what to do or how to do it — do SOMETHING. Screw it up and fix it later. Give yourself permission to fail. You might surprise yourself.