'Writing' is not an easy 'Task'!

A 'flair for writing' bug really bit me early in school days when the teacher started reading out my 'essays' in English in front of the class and I was asked later outside the class 'who has actually written it, kid? by the teacher who always believed that one of my parents must have helped me with this essay. But writing came very 'naturally' to me and I used to write so many stories in early 90's even when I was in a full time travelling job and my evenings in the hotel rooms were all busy with my writing of fictional stories. I used to enjoy my privacy in the hotel room where there was nobody to disturb me and I went on writing pages after pages, I wonder now, how many pages I used to write on single side of my long notebooks and send them to the editors for publishing with a 90% success rate those day. My publisher from Pune, India used to encourage me to write more and more and then decided to publish collection of my short stories in two volumes " Jalpari"(Mermaid) and " Sharyat" means race (see the picture above in this article) in 2000.

Writing in those days was not considered as a full time profession unless you were famous and could earn your bread and butter only on the royalty of your published books. But slowly writing became a profession in corporate world and it was early in 90's when the advent of internet and world wide web services started invading the world and the era of 'online content writers' or 'content marketing ' really started in the companies. Those companies who made websites started feeling the need of professional content writers who used to be 'freelancers' who could write web pages for the websites giving the information of the company, it's vision, mission, activities and information about its products and services for the benefit of customers. There free lance content writers charged their rates 'per word' basis. This became a big business slowly, as companies went on starting their websites for the customers and demand for Content writers started growing. Organisations started hiring full time Content Writers for written communications to their global audiences and descriptive product information. Writing a 'copy' to be used by the marketing department for creating their 'product slogans' and 'communications strategies' for the customers became big business.

'Professional Writing' in a workplace environment requires writing of effective internal communications to the employees through 'in-house journals' as well as the requirements as per company's Public Relations policies, writing company's policy manuals, Standard Operating Procedures, legal documentation, HR related policies and procedures, Ethics and Compliance Rules and Regulations, writing for Company Annual reports, Project proposals, Project Reports and so on, picked up a demand for for professional writers. Writing skills became an important tool in the hands of these writers who became increasingly important content writers for the company's PR and HR Departments for writing 'Press Releases' and other official communications. Good Writing became an integral part of so many new terminologies including articles, blogs, Web content, Landing Pages, Linked web pages, Copy writing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Content, Social media writing, Research Report Writing and so on.

Content Writing styles requires specialised techniques using the 'key words' to catch the Search Engines as well as 'hold' the reader's interest about the matter. Not only writing but it also involves gathering of information, organising, editing, presenting, formatting, using graphics, images, coding into Hyper Text Markup Language (html) is involved into multimedia development and documentation. There are also Technical Content Developers who write technical information about the product or service and provide online help, manuals, design specifications, white papers, developer guides, deployment guides, release notes and so on. Content writers of today are also required to integrate the content into new or existing websites without using information technology services like 'script language programming' or 'database programming.'

Therefore, writing has become a complicated business process including academic writing, professional writing, technical writing, content writing and content development. These writers have to take into account their audience's expectations based on knowledge and competence as well as the style and formats which are comfortable to the audience to serve the purpose of communicating very well to their satisfaction.

Like in any other relationship, this relationship between the writer and the reader has to be very close and their understanding of each other's requirements which will only create a win-win for both.