How not to write a walking trails book

February has started with the good news that we have a (vague) publication date for my walking trails book. After several months of blisters, sweat, tears and blog posts in 2011, everything went ominously quiet once I’d emailed off the last chapter. But now things are moving along and the book should be out in June. In the meantime, just in case you’re thinking of pitching your own trails book, here’s what I’ve learnt:

 

Step 1: Don’t assume your pitch will be laughed out of the slush pile.

The stats about getting published are so gloomy that I didn’t really believe in my own pitch. So getting an email from the editor saying: “We’d love to commission your book!” came as something of a nasty shock. Especially as it was followed by: “Please complete 20 trails and write 40,000 words by September!”

 

Step 2: Location, location, location

One of my mistakes was pitching a book in Wales. I’ve lived here long enough to know by now that it rains. A lot. One simple four-mile trail had to be done three times and I quickly learnt that notes are surprisingly illegible when wet. I’m visiting Madrid in a couple of months… wonder what the walking trails market is like there?

 

Step 3: There’s no such thing as safety in numbers                     

I thought it would be nice to complete a couple of the trails in the company of local walking clubs. It wasn’t. Just have a think for a minute about why someone might be available to go hiking on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s clearly because they are too mad to hold down a job and are going to spend the next seven miles telling you all about the book they’ve never written and how you should write yours.

 

Step 4: Don’t get stung

No, I’m not talking financially. I’m sure that’s a whole other blog post. I’m talking literally. Wear long trousers. Stingy nettles grow really quickly in August.

 

Step 5: Don’t have children

Especially if most of the trails need to be completed during a six-week period in July and August. If it’s too late and having children can’t be avoided, stick pictures of them on your OS map, as that’s the only way you’re going to see them for four months.

New year, new dilemma

A week into the new year and I’m wondering whether it’s time to make a work-related resolution. I’ve never done this before, previous resolutions revolving around the standard ‘get fitter’ or not-so-standard ’locate the fan belt in my camper van’. But before Christmas I was commissioned to do a small copywriting project that left me a little… uncomfortable. So as 2012 gets underway, I’m left asking myself how far my own personal morals and beliefs should cross into my work?

As a copywriter I’ve been asked to write content on all sorts of things, from carpet cleaning and joinery to health and safety and elections. Some clients want corporate jargon, others prefer a more day-to-day, chatty style. All this is fine and I’ve happily handed over a range of copy to some very satisfied customers. But as I got deeper and deeper into the recent commission, I found myself increasingly objecting to the words I was putting on the page. I’ve now been asked to take on more work for the client and for the first time have found myself wondering whether to politely decline.

To put all this into perspective, I haven’t been asked by the BNP to write a glossy brochure advocating their views (although I did once interview Nick Griffin). The client is not doing anything illegal and doesn’t steal lollipops from small children (as far as I’m aware). It’s simply that, due to my personal opinions, I’m not convinced by my own copy… and that’s an odd place in which to find myself.

So I’d love to hear from other copywriters and journalists asking for your take on this. What would you do? 

 

Deadline? What deadline?

Here we are in the middle of September, so according to my schedule for The Book, all 20 trails have been completed on sunny summer’s days and I’m now close to the proofing bit.

Hmmm. Or maybe nine in a row were completed on sunny summer’s days then the summer stopped. In July. The next six were interesting affairs (try taking notes and photos, whilst walking, in the finest Welsh drizzle). And the other five… well let’s just say I haven’t put my walking boots away just yet.

But it’s fine and I’m not at all stressed. I didn’t start panicking when one of the seven local authorities which initially said I could include some of its routes changed its collective mind, or when I discovered major maintenance is due to start on another trail next year – roughly at publication time. I’m not at all stressed because I’ve discovered that my publisher has a surprisingly laid back approach to deadlines.

Writers like to pretend that deadlines are a bad thing, especially when our news editor is yelling that she needs 400 words and a box-out within 20 minutes or she’s going to put us in a sandwich and eat us for lunch. Even the word ‘deadlines’ sounds nose-wrinklingly unpleasant. But here’s the big secret. Deadlines are good. They make us Get Things Done.

My deadline for The Book was the end of October (or ‘before my Hallowe’en party’, as my five-year-old keeps reminding me). So I was going to forego sleep in September and officially kick off the panicking on October 1. Then I got an email from my publisher saying that ‘anytime’ before the end of the year is ok and I won’t be eaten after all.

So of course I’m still going to write 40,000 words to the initial deadline, possibly giving myself a teeny bit of leeway into the second week of November to finalise maps, picture captions and credits. I’m absolutely not going to leave the remaining five trails until it’s snowing, play on Facebook and spend Christmas Eve writing Chapter 20. Because a deadline’s still a deadline, isn’t it?

Fully booked

I’ve gone and done it. That thing that freelances never, ever do. I’ve Turned Down Work. I took a call yesterday in the middle of Boots from a PR man asking if I could take on a commission with a very tight deadline and, despite every instinct wanting to say: “Yes of course! It’ll be with you by Sunday!”, I actually found myself politely declining. And it’s all because of The Book.

Earlier this year I decided that in between working for Macmillan Cancer Support and being a journalist and a copywriter and doing subbing shifts, I really needed to pitch a book idea to a publisher. It was an idea about heritage trails in this part of Wales, inspired by my being asked to write the 2011 tourism guide for Rhondda Cynon Taf. I put loads of work into the pitch, researching and brainstorming and deliberating over which font publishers like. Then a six-page contract arrived in the post and that’s when I realised my brilliant idea hadn’t gone as far as actually completing 20 walks and writing 40,000 words.

So this summer (yes, in the school holidays, when I need to squeeze in a bit of looking after my children too), I will be hiking across south east Wales and visiting museums and interviewing knowledgeable history bods. I’ve allocated September for writing (are 40,000 words possible in 10 freelance working days?), while in October (deadline month) I will be mostly panicking. But the walking and interviewing and panicking are officially on hold for the next two weeks while, in my day job, we get through a royal visit and a rather large awards ceremony.

But if anyone needs a copywriter in the next couple of months, please get in touch. Because even if I take your call six miles into a wild Welsh heritage trail, I’m really very likely to say: “Yes I’d love to write you 2,000 words by teatime.”

Life in the slow lane

I’m ashamed to say it’s been a month since my last post, so this one’s slightly overdue. As I have learnt from experience, though, things rarely happen quickly in the world of copywriting. This week I received in the post my copy of Quality Wales, Visit Wales’ coffee table publication. I’d been looking forward to it, having contributed quite a significant chunk of content – last September. Then there’s RCT’s 2011 Visitor Guide, which I also got my hands on this week after beginning to think I’d be asked to start on the 2012 version before this one was printed.

In between waiting for the postman, I’ve been busy writing a hefty pitch for a trail book… which has been commissioned! But as publication won’t be until this time next year, no need to all rush to Amazon at once. Oh, and I’ve also started a new job!  I’m now a communications officer with a leading cancer organisation, working part-time. The lovely people I work with are dynamic and inspiring but it seems even they can’t escape the perils of snail mail. I received my formal offer of the post yesterday – three days into the job.

It’s all a far cry from my reporting days on a busy daily, where I would arrive at 7am to yells of: “Don’t take your coat off!” This would invariably mean heading straight back out on a breaking story and filing 300 words within the hour. I loved the buzz and the unpredictability of each day and couldn’t imagine myself ever doing anything else. But a few (ahem) years on, I think life in the slow lane might be for me after all. Some web content I was commissioned to write urgently has turned out to be a more – how shall I put it - organic affair, with the client moving back deadlines on a weekly basis. This has left me with little to do other than head out into the sunshine to peruse my copy of Quality Wales. After all, it’s so long since I wrote it, I’m bound to learn something new.

Vertically challenged

Clinging with hurting fingers to a sliver of a hold 20ft up the climbing wall, I focused on my belayer’s “helpful” instructions. “Swivel!” he yelled at my every move, and not for the first time I wondered how, exactly, this supposedly de-stressing hobby differed from a day’s work.

We were working on a new technique to rectify bad habits that have been easy to fall into. The make-or-break point on any climbing route is called the crux (or, more technically, the “hard bit”) – and getting to the crux of the matter is what I do on a daily basis as a copywriter. Some of the topics I’ve been asked to write about have been pretty far outside my comfort zone; about as far as having to re-train my feet to do all the hard climbing work when my instinct (and bad habit) is to rely on my arms. Yet my job is to assimilate sometimes quite industry-specific information and turn it into a cheery read.  

For some reason, though, I have very different attitudes to work and personal comfort zones. When a client asks me if something is achievable (usually by a week last Thursday) I smile and say: “Of course!” When my climbing buddies ask me if I want to try out a particularly challenging route, I laugh at them and say: “Of course not!” Unfortunately they don’t give me a choice and before I know it, I’m halfway up a 5+ and cursing the day I quit the gym for this ridiculous new-found hobby.

Not so long ago,  I took on some partnership work now officially known as The Project We Shall Not Mention. An ever-changing brief made the whole thing one long crux which required more re-writes than the history of Britain. I would use the analogy of tears, sweat and bruised knuckles, but in this case it would only apply to The PWSNM and not the climbing. Yet we got the project finished and survived to scrutinise some hard-learnt lessons.  

I can’t quite say the same about the 5+, which got the better of me this time. But it’s still there for me to conquer once my swivelling skills are up to scratch. And in the meantime I’ll stick to undertaking unmentionable copywriting projects as a nice, de-stressing break from an evening at the climbing wall.

So, what’s a copywriter then?

Sometimes I think I should have become an accountant or a traffic warden. Ok, so no one would like me – but at least everyone would know what I did for a living. You say “Hi, I’m a copywriter” in a room full of new people and polite silence descends.

It’s really simple; copywriters write. We write anything a business needs to put across an effective message to retain loyal customers and attract new ones.  This can include web content, blogs, brochures and leaflets (although I have also been known to turn my hand to typing out a list of 400 words relating to wood after one client mistook me for a copytaker). 

When I was solely a journalist, everyone knew what that was (although I wasn’t necessarily above the accountant and traffic warden in the popularity stakes). Even my seven-year-old knew that I ’wrote stories’. Now, though, I might just have to launch a National Copywriters’ Day to raise awareness of my trade. It’s my only hope of avoiding a fate worse than appearing on daytime telly. The seven-year-old’s teacher asked her what job I did. “Oh Mummy just stays at home on the computer all day,” she informed her.

Move over Jeremy Kyle, we copywriters are a breed of our own!