When Your Our Writing Feels “Wrong” What Do You Do?

Welcome back to Kufre Ekpo’s Blog and today I’m going to share some lessons I've learned to help you shape your successful freelance business.

Writing is the window to an individual's soul. It is a way for other people to see what is in your head. It is a way for them to see how you process information and where your opinions lay. It is really all about how you compose yourself on the paper.

Today, I want to talk about something that can happen when you're writing. It's a gut feeling that something isn't quite right. Here's a story to illustrate what I mean.

Read the story what happened to a copywriter here.

It happened on a project for a client I really wanted to impress. I was working with the marketing manager to develop an outline for a sales letter. We agreed on a final version, and I started to write.

However, writing was difficult. The pieces didn't seem to fit together. My gut was telling me something was wrong, but my mind insisted, "If the marketing manager is happy with the outline, then it's my job to make it work."

Long story short, my sales letter made it all the way to final production before it was canned by the publisher. The reason it was scrapped? The idea wasn't clear, and the letter was too convoluted.

What lesson has the story taught you?

 Be willing to change your approach if your gut says, "This isn't working."

If you're feeling something isn't right, stop and take a step back. Your gut feeling is telling you something. It's time to check your ideas, as well as your writing.

Here are three steps to see if you're heading in the right direction.

1.      Check your main idea. Is it clear? Can you repeat it to someone in one or two sentences? Do they understand it? More importantly, if they fit your audience profile, do they get excited about it? If the answer is "no" to any of these questions, you may need to rethink your big idea.

2.      Examine your outline. You should be able to write one sentence for every main point you want to make in your article or letter. Hand it to a friend or family member to read – preferably someone in your target audience. Can they follow everything easily? If they get tripped up somewhere, you'll need to make some changes.

3.      Finally, look at each paragraph you've written. Do you have only one idea per paragraph? Does every paragraph entice your test readers to continue on to the next one? If not, you need to do some rewriting.

These three steps work on any project, even a one-page article. In fact, you can take these steps before you begin writing. That way, you'll be sure your big idea is exciting, and your supporting points are clear right from the start.

To overcome you fear in writing you can read this post a great way to handle fear.

You can practice this by applying these steps to an article you enjoyed reading. Or, try it with a promotion that made you want to buy the service or product they were offering. This is a great way to improve your skills in organizing ideas.

Keep your writing spirit alive. Please share this post. Thanks!