Do you want to spin the wheel with writers?

First thing in the morning on LinkedIn, I saw a comment from a person complaining about a writer spinning a text taken from a web page to deliver an article to him. It was way beyond deadline and still the writer could not take care of plagiarism.

After reading the whole story, I could identify two problems –

1.      The company gave her only 2 hours to work on the article

2.      The writer without much thought agreed on it, possibly to earn some quick bucks

If you are thinking that writing a small piece of a few hundred words is quite a simple feat and can be done within 2 hours, you are assuming that the writer you have approached has at least 8-9 years of experience in writing. If that is not true, your assumption is wrong.

Writing is a brain job and not spinning the wheel kind of work.

Types of Writers

You may call them - a bad writer and a good writer but, I call them - a wordsmith writer and a logical writer. And there are more categories…

Wordsmith: A wordsmith is a person who can play with words well and can say the same thing in 100 different ways. A real wordsmith would be quite an intelligent person who would know how to spin the text to make it do wonders for a reader. However, to reach this level, you need a real good practice. As it is said, for anyone to be an expert in something, you need at least 10,000 hours of practice. It also applies to writers. Please do not count the examination writing, chats, or self-blogging in this practice. Practice, for a freelance writer, is the practice one gets while doing a real client job. A fresher wordsmith is like a fresh graduate who does not understand he nuances of the field, but just wants to try the luck with words because it pays. But if you are hiring such a person for your company work, expect some glitches.

Logical Writers: These writers do not play with words but with thoughts. They may be using simple words, but they will do the job well. With no flamboyance, they can still do wonders. Logical writers are more than language nerds. They are mostly the subject matter experts. You can find them in categories like academic writer, business writer, technical writer, tech writer, social blogger, and so on. Are you choosing a writer from the right category?

Editors: Editors are brilliant at writing and even using logic, but they are not the subject matter experts. They usually have a good understanding of how to write for a specific industry as they have travelled through a long growth path in their fields and would have at least a good foundation knowledge of the industry. However, they always rely on technical guys to produce the first piece of work which they can later refine into a gorgeous peace. These writers can be pure editors or even writers with editorial skill. A writer with an editorial skill is highly experienced and you may never find yourself complaining. Such a writer will not just understand the importance of logic, subject expertise, and language but also understand the readers well. They keep asking themselves questions like – will this language be suitable for the target reader? Does this sentence clarify the idea well? Is it even relevant? Is the fact important enough to include? An editor can even reduce the length of an article to a great extent while another writer would struggle to do that.

Picture this – A logical writer creates an article of 1000 words, the wordsmith would spin it and increase it to 1300 words. When this piece goes to an editor, the final words come down to 500. That is an editor! This is not a story but a reality. I once received a small piece from a writer that I had to work on to beautify. Basically, I had to do the job of a wordsmith. The article had 120 words. After I was done with the job, the article was 140 words and when it went to a highly experienced editor in the company, the final piece had only 45 words. Most of the content was removed. That is what an editor would do.

The All-Round Category

There is one rare category of writers – The All-Round Learners – I see them like rivers as they can mold themselves into any form or style of writing. They understand language, logic, subject, formats, audience, editing, and a lot more. Such writers are born purely out of passion. They are not in love with one subject or a field but with the art of writing itself. With right references to go through, they would be willing to learn and then write on almost any subject. The beauty is that they are highly flexible and can create any writing format. Whether it is a highly technical piece like a whitepaper or a highly creative piece like a story, they will always put their best foot forward.

All-round writers are usually the ones with significant experience in writing - even more than the 10,000-hour mark. These writers do not just have the experience of writing but also other fields. They may not exactly be the literature graduates, but they could be the business students or maybe engineers, doctors…they come from a wide variety of fields. They will, no wonder, make a cool choice for you but they are still not the editors. While most times, you will see a perfect piece delivered by them, you may want to take help from an editor, if you are targeting readers from a market your all-rounder is unfamiliar with.

The choice is yours – Do you want to spin the word wheel with novice writers who do not understand the beauty and logic of writing? Or would you want to choose the right writer, not compromise on quality, and be willing to relax on time and money?