Heads Off the Desks, People!

Fab-u day today. I took time off from the on-site job long enough to catch up with projects. Managed to crank out what I think is a pretty decent draft on a highly-technical article for a client. Why do I love the business techie stuff so much? Maybe because it pays the bills and is interesting. Hey, anything is interesting if you set out to put your own twist on it, right?

That’s what I’d like to chat about today – work and making it fun. I have heard no end of folks whining about how hard something is or how “boring” the topic is. Yes, there are some decidedly non-sexy stuff, like the gazillion workers’ compensation articles I’ve churned out over the years. But guess what? I started out not knowing Thing One about some of these topics (or Thing Two, for that matter). It just took my looking at it as a challenge to overcome in order to make it interesting for me.

I remember the first assignment for a non-sexy topic – write 500 words about new ducts that prevent restaurant fires from going out of control. Armed with exactly three pages of press release info and an Internet connection, I sat there stunned and disheartened. My big break into business pubs was about to go kaput. But then I thought, “What the hell – I’m just going to start writing.” I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? The editor could’ve hated it and I’d have been out of a job. So with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I wrote. Got a catchy little hook – “What’s the hottest thing in restaurant fire safety?”

Guess what? He loved it. He loved it so much, he offered me the senior editor position. Cool! However, now the real challenge began – how to maintain that excitement about all those other dull and completely foreign topics. Ugh. But I did it. I did it by making it fun in my mind. I didn’t try to talk “up” to the audience, as other writers were doing. I talked to them from my own perspective; and it worked. Amen!

If I told you the topics I was writing about today, I’d have to wake you up to finish. However, I’m getting $1/word and ongoing assignments should this article go well for the client. If that doesn’t inspire you to care about your topic, what will?