The Golden Pencil: The Freelance Writer’s Resource

Rope Pushing and Freelance Writers

by Anne Wayman on October 29th, 2007

I chuckled when I saw the headline over at Common Sense PR - Tip: You Can’t Push a Rope. Although the post is more or less aimed at working in/with corporate environments, it’s certainly also true in the freelance writing business.

Eric points out that it may be the wrong time - I can’t count the number of potential clients who have contacted me and then disappeared. Some of them have probably found other writers, but for many, it simply wasn’t the right time to hire a writer. That’s fine with me, and sometimes those clients surface later, sometimes a lot later, and hire me.

Eric also says, and rightly so that people will not be led if they don’t want to be. I’d go further and say also that they won’t be led where they don’t want to go. In my case as a ghostwriter, if a client is determined to find a trade publisher, that’s where they will head, even if it’s obvious that they should self-publish and market their own book through their own lectures, etc. Or they buy into expensive promo packages that simply have no chance of really working. Or they refuse to recognize when the book is complete.

Every writer who works with clients has this type of experience.

The best thing to realize is you really can’t push a rope… at least not in a straight line. You can only push a rope as a lump of line, and that probably isn’t what you or the client need or want.

All I’m responsible is to do the best job I can and give the best advice I know how to give. What the client does with it is, well, up to the client.

Have you got an example of this? Tell us about it.

Write well and often,

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POSTED IN: Business of Freelance Writing, Musings From A Freelance Writer