Writers and Editors

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Page Content • Copywriting, speechwriting, marketing,corporate and technical communications, training, and consulting
• Helpful links
• Speechwriting and presentations (tips, organizations, resources
(with pointers on how to use PowerPoint)
• What's the difference between a technical writer and a technical communicator?
• Organizations for corporate, government, and technical communicators
• Helpful books on e-learning, distance education, and online training
• Getting funded: Grant proposal writing

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Copywriting, speechwriting, marketing,
corporate and technical communications, training, and consulting
Here's the part of the website for people who think writing is a good way to make a lot of money (one that doesn't involve writing a bestselling book or movie). If you want to earn a freelance living doing corporate or technical writing or training, or providing e-Learning, you might start with books by a couple of writers who can explain the business end of things: Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $100,000 a Year or More by Bob Bly (now in its 3rd edition) and The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman. Be realistic about whether you are capable of doing this kind of writing, which ranges from technical writing to marketing copy — that is, whether you have the skills and whether you have the temperament for it. Personally, I am grateful to Bob Bly for letting me know years ago that I was undercharging for my services, but it takes time and experience to learn whether you are good enough to charge and earn the big bucks. Packaging seems to be important. "Independent consultant" may sound more professional than "freelance writer-editor-coach-teacher-whatever." However you get your foot in the door, the best way to succeed as a writing or editing consultant is to do a good job, so that word of mouth brings you new clients while the old ones help you pay the mortgage.

Writers tend to be introverts, happily alone with their computers, but if you are good at working with people you might consider training. If you can write a how-to manual and also play well with others, consider training, which pays well and can be satisfying. There are organizations that train trainers, including ASTD.

If you're good with technology and can think through the learning process (which is at least as important as knowing how to work the technology), you might want to investigate may want to check out Instructional Design and Learning (IDL). If you want to design programs for distance learning (eLearning), swap ideas with others in the field. On the STC's IDL "sig" (special interest group), members swap stories about their experiences with Lectora, FlashForm, Captivate, PowerPoint, ToolBook, and Authorware (for content creation, including simulations) and eLeap, MindFlash, and RapideL (as hosting solutions).

To create names for use in writing training manuals, mosey over to the Fiction department and check out sites that provide fake and random name generators.

Alternative Income Sources for Writers, Norman Bauman's summary of an ASJA meeting (2002), helpful on technical writing. See also Catherine E. Oliver on what's required for technical writing; How to find and price medical writing jobs (1999); a piece on text retrieval and search engines, all on Bauman's website, Medical Writing in New York.

Anecdote (Australia, "Putting stories to work") offers a free download of Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles (PDF, a practical guide to facilitating storytelling and story listening). A blog entry criticizing a Steve Denning video about radical management for not telling stories also offers a Storytest to see if you can spot a story. Good site for insights into storytelling for businesses.

Better User Experience with Storytelling (Part 1, Francisco Inchauste, Smashing Magazine). How user experience professionals and designers are using storytelling to create compelling experiences that build human connections. Read more about the UX Storytellers Project here. Then you will probably want to buy the book: Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks (foreword by Ginny Redish), about the power of storytelling to improve the user experience. Check it out a bit through Frequently Asked Questions.

Blue Man Group (Alison Shapira on the benefits of writing a "why to" instead of a "how to" manual, explaining a vision so others can carry it out their way)

By Design: The Story of Crown Equipment Corporation (an early project of mine) is a good example of the new approach to corporate history -- using stories and profiles of people to make a company history come alive and packaging a very human story in a beautifully designed book. You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.com

CorporateHistory.net. Marian Calabro's company site has useful FAQs and downloads about commissioning a corporate history, and the CorporateHistory.net blog has interesting analyses of (and grades for) various corporate websites, among other things. Her slogan: "What is written is remembered."

Direct Creative blog articles (Dean Rieck on Copyright and Direct Marketing) and Rieck's Direct Marketing Article Archive

Five Truths I've Learned in My Role as Writing Coach, one of several helpful entries on the blog
Writing Matters (by e-write's Leslie O'Flahavan and Marilynne Rudick). Others include: Customer Satisfaction Surveys: It's All in the Writing and Four Professional Ways to Close an E-Mail. This two-woman firm offers a good Web-writing course.

Help Authoring Tools. Overview of "recommendable" tools for creating software documentation, especially for the creation of user manuals and online help files, by Marc Achtelig of Indoition. (I am not knowledgeable enough to evaluate this, but it looks useful.)

How Much Should I Charge (Writers and Editors, Pricing Strategies, How to Set Rates, and Other Survival Basics)

How to Write a Case Study (Jennifer Mattern, Directory Journal 7-12-11)

I'd Rather Be Writing, Tom Johnson's blog about the latest trends in technical communication, and his WordPress Tips Newsletter, for blogging in WordPress.

Importance of good writing to business success
• Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . Or a Ticket Out (National Writing Project 9-04, you can download the report). The National Commission on Writing, which published the landmark report The Neglected "R," focuses on the American workplace in its second report. According to this report, as technology's role continues to grow, good writing skills are increasingly valued by big business. (you can download PDF file of full report). "In today's workplace writing is a "threshold skill" for hiring and promotion among salaried (i.e., professional) employees. Survey results indicate that writing is a ticket to professional opportunity, while poorly written job applications are a figurative kiss of death." -- from Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . Or a Ticket Out
• Writing: A Powerful Message from State Government (download the report). The National Commission on Writing reports that state governments place a high value on the writing skills of their employees, often providing training for professional employees deficient in writing skills.

Marketing
• Marketing Profs (marketing resources for marketing professionals-- excellent resources for those who join, $295)
• Marketing Sherpa. Many excellent articles, including New Eyetracking Heatmap: 6 Ways to Get More Webinar Sign-Ups by Anne Holland.

Organizations for corporate, government, and technical communicators • ACM Special Interest Group for Design of Communications (SIGDOC,, Association for Computing Machinery) • American Business Media (ABM, an association of business information companies) • American Grant Writers' Association (AGWA) • American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) *** American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) • Association for Business Communication (ABC) • Association for Women in Communications (AWC) • Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) • Association of Independent Information Professionals (aiip, an industry association for owners of independent information businesses) • Association of Professional Communication Consultants (APCC, teaching businesses how to communicate) • Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) • eLearning Guild(an online community for the design, development, and management of web-based educational or instructional content — e-Learning) • FrameWorks Institute (Changing the public conversation about social problems) *** GovLoop (social networking for government) • Grant Professionals Association (GPA) (formerly American Grant Writers Association) • HTML Writers Group (IWA-HWG, merged with the International Webmasters Association), writing for the Web • Human Factors and Ergonomics Society *** International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) • International Communication Association (ICA) • International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) • International Society of Logistics (SOLE) • International Webmasters Association (IWA, merged with HTML Writers Guild as IWA-HWG) • Media Communications Association--International (MCA-I) *** National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) • National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE) *** National Association of Science Writers (NASW) • National Education Technology Writers Association (NETWA) • National Resume Writers Association (NRWA) • North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA) • Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches (PARW/​CC) • Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) *** Society for Technical Communications (STC). Major organization with many local chapters and helpful online special interest groups, or SIGs, on instructional design, usability, technical editing, and other topics). You may work toward or apply to be a Certified Professional in Technical Communication (CPTC). • Techwr-l (listserv for technical writers) • Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) • Washington Speechwriters Roundtable (DC) • Worldwide Story Network (a community of story practitioners focused on applying story-based techniques in organizational settings) • WritersUA (WinWriters), training, info, and good resource lists for user assistance professionals (Help systems)

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Plain Language
• What Is Plain Language?
• A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents (PDF file, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission)
• Plain Language Handbook (PDF file of Richard Lauchman's handbook for federal U.S. writing)
• Plain Language: It's the law (PlainLanguage.gov). Here are plain language experts and pages for various federal U.S. agencies
• Model website language (PlainLanguage.gov)

Plucked From Their Web Writing to Promote a Vaseline Brand (Tanzina Vega, NYTimes, 11-8-10). Vaseline uses crowdsourcing to find product spokeswomen.

Policies and procedures. A key source of guidance on this specialty (emphasizing the systems thinking aspect of communications) is Raymond E. Urgo & Associates, whose articles, white papers, and presentations may be helpful, as well as Urgo's quarterly e-newsletter: The Policy & Procedures Authority . Past issues are available on the website.

Secrets of a Freelance Writer:How to Make $100,000 a Year or More by Robert Bly (third edition), how to make the big bucks writing ads, annual reports, brochures, catalogs, newsletters, direct mail, Web pages, CD-ROMs, press releases, and other projects for corporations, small businesses, associations, nonprofit organizations, the government, and other commercial clients.

Seven Simple Steps to Persuasive Writing (Elizabeth Evans Fryer, Intercom, March 2004)

12 Breeds of Clients and How to Work with Them (Jack Knight,Freelance Switch). Very helpful; do you recognize the types? (Note to headline writer: "disinterested" doesn't mean "uninterested.")

Two-way comm's blog (Dom Crincoli's blog on stirring the status quo in corporate communication and social media)

Using Readability Formulas: A Cautionary Note (Part 7 of the Toolkit for Making Written Material Clear and Effective, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). The toolkit clearly addresses in inadequacies of readability formulas.

The Well-Fed Writer. Income-boosting resources for commercial writers (copywriters, business writers, corporate writers or marketing writers) by Peter Bowerman. His books:
• The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency as a Commercial Freelancer in Six Months or Less
• The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living
• The Well-Fed Writer: Back For Seconds A Second Helping Of "How-To" For Any Writer Dreaming of Great Bucks and Exceptional Quality of Life (mostly new content includes case histories)
• FAQs answered by Peter Bowerman
• The Deluxe Well-Fed Tool Box and The Well-Fed Writer Time Line (automatic download after purchase).

What It’s Really Like to Work for Government by Pam Broviak, on GovLoop (a social network for the government community to connect and share information)

White Papers
• White Paper Source
• The White Paper FAQ, answers to frequently asked questions, by Gordon Graham, That White Paper Guy
• How to Write a White Paper (Jennifer Mattern, Directory Journal 9-1-09)
• How to Write a White Paper, By the Numbers (Gordon Graham, Whitepapersource.com 4-3-10)
• Do the Flip: How to Turn Product/​Service Features Into White Paper Topics (Jonathan Kranz, Whitepapersource 3-9-10)

Humor in speechwriting. Cynthia J. Starks, "Mushroom walks into a bar" (3-15-11). "A speaker’s humor should be self-deprecating and/​or play off contemporary issues and popular culture – the zeitgeist of the day."

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Speechwriting and presentations
(tips, organizations, resources,
with pointers on how and how not to use PowerPoint)
• American Rhetoric (terrific database of great speeches, text and audio, from politics, from movies, from history -- from Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech)
• Best Public Speaking Blogs (Six Minutes)
• Cicero Speechwriting Awards (Vital Speeches of the Day)
• Carter's Speech Therapy (Gordon Stewart's op-ed piece in NY Times -- story of the speechwriting process for Jimmy Carter's famed 1979 speech on the energy crisis)
• For a speechwriter, research is crucial (Mike Long, director of the White House Writer's Group, on MyRaganTV.com video)
• For today’s CEOs, lessons from master speaker Lee Iacocca (Jeff Porro, Ragan.com, 12-20-10). “A good speech is a story,” says Mike Morrison, one of Iacocca's speechwriters. And "Iacocca knew that everything having to do with communication was a story." Also, speeches are to motivate, not inform.
• Free Speech of the week from Vital Speeches of the Day
• How to get started as a freelance speechwriter (speechwriting master Mike Long)
• How Not to Use PowerPoint (clever slide show by Alexei Kapterev)
• How Not to Use PowerPoint (video, comedian Don McMillan)
• How to write a 'sticky' speech (Liz Mitchell, MyRaganTV.com video)
• Humor in speechwriting. Cynthia J. Starks, "Mushroom walks into a bar" (3-15-11). "A speaker’s humor should be self-deprecating and/​or play off contemporary issues and popular culture – the zeitgeist of the day."
• Idea Bank (for quotations, anecdotes, humor, historical tidbits and other material to jazz up speeches)
• New York Speechwriter's Roundtable (sic). Also on Facebook
• Nick Morgan's blog (public speaking advice)
• Public Speaking Blogs: The Definitive List (Six Minutes) and here's where they twitter
• PowerPoint presentations (Jerry Weissman interview)
• Professional Speaker Associations (Andrew Dlugan, Six Minutes)
• PowerPoint. Edward R. Tufte, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within ($7), and you can read a sample here of why understanding PowerPoint is particularly important with technical material: PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports (Tufte analyzes one incident of flawed PowerPoint, in a Boeing analysis of launch damage to the space shuttle Columbia, arguing that poor PowerPoint design led to grave misinterpretations of Columbia's vulnerability and to Columbia blowing up on re-entry). Go here for links to many more Tufte essays by the author of the classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (now in its second edition).
• PowerPoint (Simon Wardley's smart use of images, concept, humor in presentation on Cloud Computing)
• Presentation Tips (slideshare, Graduate School of Education, University of Buffalo)
• Presentation Tips (Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen)
• Presentation Zen (Garr Reynolds' blog on professional presentation design)
• The Problem with PowerPoint(BBC News Magazine 8-19-09, and do check out the slide show)
• Professionally Speaking (Ian Griffin's blog on communications, presentations, speechwriting, with links to other speechwriters)
• Rhetoric Resources (OEDB)
• Scared Speechless? Join Toastmasters (by Pat McNees, an article that ran eons ago in the Washington Post)
• Six Minutes. Check out speeches and speech critiques and other resources
• Speech Analysis: How to Study and Critique a Speech (Six Minutes blog)
• Speechwriting 2.0 (Fletcher Dean)
• Statistics on the Professional Speaking Industry (Dan Poynter, ParaPublishing.com)
• Vital Speeches of the Day
• Washington Speechwriters Roundtable
• We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint by Elisabeth Bumiller (NY Times 4-26-10). U.S. military spending too much time on a program some believe "stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making," creating the illusion of understanding and control.

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WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TECHNICAL WRITER AND A TECHNICAL COMMUNICATOR?

The Society for Technical Communications is trying to get the Department of Labor to update its definition, which so far is here for what a technical communicator does:

"Develop and design instructional and informational tools needed to assure safe, appropriate, and effective use of science and technology, intellectual property, and manufactured products and services. Combine multimedia knowledge and strong communication skills with technical expertise to educate across the entire spectrum of users’ abilities, technical experience,
and visual and auditory capabilities."

According to Maurice Martin and Richard O'Sullivan, who wrote "The Case for 'Technical Communicator,' "Technical writing is static and one-way. Technical communication is dynamic and interactive." Check out their article, a PDF file:
http:/​/​www.stc.org/​PDF_Files/​caseTC.pdf

“Technical writers produce content for users," says STC's Larry Kunz. "Technical communicators manage content and relationships with users.”

Why does it matter? Guess who get paid more!

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Books on
E-learning, distance education, online training

Check out the eLearning Guild (a practice community for the design, development, and management of web-based educational or instructional content). The following books may also be helpful—especially the Clark & Meyer.
• e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning by Ruth Clark and Richard E. Mayer (a solid research-based primer on how students learn and therefore how best to use technology)
• Michael Allen's Guide to E-Learning
• E-Learning by Design and Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime , both by William Horton
• Creating Learning-Centered Courses for the World Wide Web by William B. Sanders (see especially good chapter on JavaScript for enabling student interactivity—e.g., with pop-up windows and brief quizzes)
• Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web-Based Education by Beverly Abbey
• Multimedia for Learning by Stephen Alessi and Stanley Trollip
• Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology by Robert Reiser and John V. Dempsey
• Learning-Centered Assessment on College Campuses: Shifting the Focus from Teaching to Learning by Mary E. Huba
• The In's and Out's of Online Instruction: Transitioning from Brick and Mortar to Online Teaching by Danan Myers-Wylie
And then, if you are designing the instructional software, you will want to look at workshops and books on tools such as JavaScript and Flash and such authoring tools as LMSand LCMS.

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Getting Funded: Grant proposal writing (organizations,workshops, guides
(Check out these websites for workshops on grant proposal writing)
• American Grant Writers' Association (AGWA) (offers a grant-writing workshop, review, and exam for certification and online courses)
• Associated Grant Makers Common Proposal Form
• Common proposal forms (Foundation Center)
• Grant Professionals Association (GPA) (formerly American Association of Grant Professionals, AAGP)
• Non-profit guides (grant-writing tools for non-profit organizations)

Here are a few of the many books available on grant proposal writing:
• Getting Funded: The Complete Guide to Writing Grant Proposals by Mary S. Hall and Susan Howlett
• The Foundation Center's Guide to Proposal Writing
• Grant Writing For Dummies by Beverly A. Browning\
• Grant Writing: Strategies for Developing Winning Government Proposals by Patrick Miller
• The Only Grant-Writing Book You'll Ever Need: Top Grant Writers and Grant Givers Share Their Secrets by Ellen Karsh and Arlen Sue Fox
• Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write a Successful NIH Grant Application by Otto O. Yang
• Writing for a Good Cause: The Complete Guide to Crafting Proposals and Other Persuasive Pieces for Nonprofits by Joseph Barbato and Danielle Furlich
• Writing Successful Science Proposals by Andrew J. Friedland and Carol L. Folt

Here's an excellent list of resources on the subject:
• Resources for Writing and Editing Grant Proposals (Katharine O'Moore-Klopf, Editor-Mom, 1-26-11)

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