Are You Burning Your Most Important Writing Client?
by Sean Platt on April 9, 2010
If you’re a writer, congratulations! You have magic to be envied.
You possess the rare skill of being able to make something from nothing.
You can change thinking, create emotions, paint pictures in your readers’s minds. You can manufacture money from thin air.
Just by moving your fingers across the keyboard.
Through the alchemy of writing, you can take what makes you unique and turn it into consistent revenue. Write with a plan and you can turn your thoughts into an asset that keeps paying you over and over and over again.
Yet many writers make the same mistake . . . over and over again.
Instead of building for their future, they keep running around in circles. Chasing deadlines, spiraling toward burnout.
Sure, they are writing each day and working to get a long list of appreciative clients. But too many writers ignore their most important client.
If you are a writer, your most important client is you
If you are a writer, your most important assets are the words that you create.
You create great content — blog posts, email newsletters, special reports, landing and web pages, scripts for viral video — for your clients.
You know that words on the page (or screen) are crucial to building a business. And you know that strong writing is one of the most effective ways to create a valuable product.
If you are a writer, you owe it to yourself to deliver your best work to your best client, building up your business’s most valuable asset. Day after day after day.
Whether you are building your business with your content, creating an information product to teach others and help them to grow, or writing the next literary masterpiece, you have the opportunity to build a future without limits.
You have an obligation to your most important client
It is not enough to stockpile ideas for your own blog or email list, or promise yourself that you’ll get to it later. Chances are, later will knock on your door at the same time as Publisher’s Clearing House.
Don’t be the chef who gets crummy takeout on his way home, or the plumber with a steady drip in her kitchen sink.
Be the writer who writes. Not just for others, but for yourself. Each day pulling your dreams taut, one sentence at a time.
It’s easy to get off track
Like the mythical Monday that keeps you from sticking to your diet, flimsy excuses are always in reach. And like dieting, it is seeing the results that can keep you on track.
The steady accumulation of words over time is a remarkable thing. A large project can feel daunting, but the most important thing you could ever do is to simply get started.
The first 500 words are seeds. Every syllable after that is fertilizer, sun, and water.
Whether you write 250 or 2,500 words per day, be consistent. Watch them grow. Soon enough you will have a thriving business, a solid product, or perhaps even a bestselling book.
No one’s going to make you do it
You probably started writing so that you could be your own boss. I know I did.
Don’t get me wrong, writing for others is a wonderful way to make a living and I’ve never had more fun in my life. But I also understand that there’s a magic to being a writer which goes beyond the page; a magic that stretches right into forever.
Long after the waves of time have rinsed my footprints to memory, my words will be read, shared and remembered.
You are a writer as well.
So book some time today with your most important client, and make that client’s dreams come true.
Sean Platt is a content marketing specialist and Creative Director at REV Media Marketing. Follow him on Twitter.
