What Business Are You In?
The title of this post probably sounds like a stupid question. You're a writer, right? Then you must be in the writing business.
Absolutely not. You do write, and people pay you after you write, but they aren't really paying you because you write. If people were paid simply for the act of writing, there would be millions of professional writers out there. But anyone who's been in the business knows that there getting people to pay you for writing is difficult.
The reason is that they aren't buying writing. They're buying a someone to satisfy their needs. This came home to me on a recent assignment in which I received a somewhat vague assignment. I talked with the client, understood what the contact wanted to achieve, and I started to offer suggestions - a way to frame the approach to satisfy my client's client, a structure that might provide a way of meeting the layout parameters of the publication while conveying the necessary content, and a new approach when the client made an assumption (which I had specifically asked about) that turned out not to be valid. With each step, I helped the experienced contact relax and gain more confidence that I would deliver something that would work - because we collaboratively solved the problems, and the execution would then be mechanical and predictable.
I understood that "writing" was either only part of what I do, or that the definition of writing is far broader than you often hear. I was solving a business problem. That's not to say that the writing process is unimportant to me. On the contrary, I'm always looking to expand my repertoire, strengthen my descriptive capabilities, and deepen my grasp of structure. But by itself, that is not enough. I need to apply these capabilities toward what my clients need. Otherwise I might as well be writing something literary. There's nothing wrong with that, of course (and I do write plays, fiction, and poetry), but if I want clients to deliver sizeable paychecks, I need to deliver what clients values: the satisfaction of their needs.
Absolutely not. You do write, and people pay you after you write, but they aren't really paying you because you write. If people were paid simply for the act of writing, there would be millions of professional writers out there. But anyone who's been in the business knows that there getting people to pay you for writing is difficult.
The reason is that they aren't buying writing. They're buying a someone to satisfy their needs. This came home to me on a recent assignment in which I received a somewhat vague assignment. I talked with the client, understood what the contact wanted to achieve, and I started to offer suggestions - a way to frame the approach to satisfy my client's client, a structure that might provide a way of meeting the layout parameters of the publication while conveying the necessary content, and a new approach when the client made an assumption (which I had specifically asked about) that turned out not to be valid. With each step, I helped the experienced contact relax and gain more confidence that I would deliver something that would work - because we collaboratively solved the problems, and the execution would then be mechanical and predictable.
I understood that "writing" was either only part of what I do, or that the definition of writing is far broader than you often hear. I was solving a business problem. That's not to say that the writing process is unimportant to me. On the contrary, I'm always looking to expand my repertoire, strengthen my descriptive capabilities, and deepen my grasp of structure. But by itself, that is not enough. I need to apply these capabilities toward what my clients need. Otherwise I might as well be writing something literary. There's nothing wrong with that, of course (and I do write plays, fiction, and poetry), but if I want clients to deliver sizeable paychecks, I need to deliver what clients values: the satisfaction of their needs.
Labels: clients, relationships
posted by Erik Sherman | 4:47 AM
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