Freelance Writing. Adios Amigos!
This is my 100th blog for this website. The 100th and my last. I have decided it’s time to admit I have been straining the spider’s thread that has so tenuously joined so many of my rants to the topic of freelance writing. I have had a great time blogging for you all, and I [...] Say What? The core of freelance writing is communication. Skull Cinema I get no time to write creatively these days, and I don’t do a whole lot of reading outside that which is required for my work. Technical Writing and The Big Ba- The idea of technical writing may put some freelance writers off. Rise of the Machines A couple of months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon had struck a deal with British book retailer Waterstones to sell Amazon Kindle digital readers in all its 294 stores by this September.
Get Stuffed We all hope, as freelance writers, to make our mark in some way. The Random Insanity of America I read a funny story a few days ago involving a guy who ended up getting shot. 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes. I’ve edited a monthly magazine for more than six years, and it’s a job that’s come with more frustration than reward.
If there’s one thing I am grateful for — and it sure isn’t the pay — it’s that my work has allowed endless time to hone my craft to Louis Skolnick levels of grammar geekery. As someone who slings red ink for a living, let me tell you: grammar is an ultra-micro component in the larger picture; it lies somewhere in the final steps of the editing trail; and as such it’s an overrated quasi-irrelevancy in the creative process, perpetuated into importance primarily by bitter nerds who accumulate tweed jackets and crippling inferiority complexes.
But experience has also taught me that readers, for better or worse, will approach your work with a jaundiced eye and an itch to judge. While your grammar shouldn’t be a reflection of your creative powers or writing abilities, let’s face it — it usually is. Who and Whom This one opens a big can of worms. Which and That Lay and Lie.
To My Old Master. In 1864, after 32 long years in the service of his master, Jourdon Anderson and his wife, Amanda, escaped a life of slavery when Union Army soldiers freed them from the plantation on which they had been working so tirelessly.
They grasped the opportunity with vigour, quickly moved to Ohio where Jourdon could find paid work with which to support his growing family, and didn’t look back. Then, a year later, shortly after the end of the Civil War, Jourdon received a desperate letter from Patrick Henry Anderson, the man who used to own him, in which he was asked to return to work on the plantation and rescue his ailing business. Jourdon’s reply to the person who enslaved his family, dictated from his home on August 7th, is everything you could wish for, and quite rightly was subsequently reprinted in numerous newspapers.
Jourdon Anderson never returned to Big Spring, Tennessee. He passed away in 1907, aged 81, and is buried alongside his wife who died six years later. Why Stories Sell: Transportation Leads to Persuasion. Psychological research on persuasion suggests that stories which transport people are more likely to be persuasive.
Marketers have known for years that stories are a powerful tool for persuading people. That’s partly because stories (unlike statistics) are easy to understand. That’s why politicians try to persuade us by telling stories about their vision of the world. They do spout statistics as well, but normally only in support of some kind of grand narrative. We instinctively understand that people resist being told what to do, but will respond to the moral of a story.
Engage to persuade Research suggests that trying to persuade people by telling them stories does indeed work (Green & Brock, 2000). Stories work so well to persuade us because, if they’re well told, we get swept up in them, we are transported inside them. Transportation is key to why they work. Stories which contain emotional elements draw in those looking for an emotional charge. WebSource.it.
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