My real passion is fiction writing, but I earn my living as
a technical writer. It pays well, I do enjoy it, and I’m good at it. I have
feedback from clients, such as:
- I just wanted to thank you for the time you spent working on these documents for us. I appreciate your attention to detail in what you have provided.
- Thank you so much for the work you did for us. Your suggestions and advice were invaluable in giving us a professional product for the market.
- We really appreciate the attention to detail in the editing work you did for us, and love that you made all our manuals and other documentation read so much better.
I have also done some paid editing work of fiction written
by strangers who have contacted me through my website. Their feedback has been
along the lines of:
- Thanx so much for making my writing oh so much better, and for giving me the tools to improve my writing going forward. Excellent advice and notes.
- Thank you for your feedback and advice about my novel. I hadn’t realised there was so much work still to do on it, and although I was upset at first, going over it again I realise you were right about everything. Thanks heaps.
Friends constantly badger me to review/edit their work, and
I have always held out against doing this. However, recently I had a slight lull in tech writing work
after delays at the clients’ end on two contracts, so decided I’d help three friends
out, who’d been asking for a while, and take a look at their fiction writing.
The first said they were “appalled and tremendously upset”
about my comments, and that they couldn’t believe I had “deliberately and cruelly”
set out to destroy their confidence.
The second said my feedback was “hurtful and painful”, and tried
to justify the quality of their work by pointing out the numbers of editors and
readers it had already been through.
The third said “your [sic] a cold-harted [sic] bitch and I
think you’re[sic] writing sux and you are a false friend”. And then they
unfriended me on Facebook.
What is it with friends that they can ask a professional technical
writer and editor (I charge anywhere from $40-120 an hour for the work I do,
and my clients keep coming back) to review their work for free, and then viciously
attack you when you offer genuine advice on how to improve their writing?
I held out against helping friends for a long time because of
my suspicion that friends don’t really want me to actually constructively review
or edit their work; they think that, as a friend, I will simply say it’s
wonderful and give it a glowing endorsement … because we are friends … no
matter how bad it is. It seems this past week has proved my suspicion correct.
From now on I’ll stick to helping strangers and charging them
for it … it’s far, far more rewarding than trying to help friends.
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