Not so long ago and not so very far away I went to university.  I was in my mid-thirties at the time so I’d learned loads of stuff from that bigger university called life.  I learned things like if you do the work, you’ll get the marks.  Or things like if you do original work and don’t copy stuff, you’ll get really good marks.  I also knew from experience that to some extent getting through educational systems is a bit of a hoop jumping exercise, but by your mid-thirties you usually want to get something more out of the experience than just exercise.  When it comes to essay writing there is, however, a bit of a hoop jumping trick to the task and it’s one that is worth learning as soon as you can.  I’ll admit that even today I’m a great deadline surfer and at that’s a fairly common thing among students.  However, there’s a way to getting your essay in at the last minute and there’s a way not to, here’s how they go.

Once upon a time in the Library

While at university I found myself languidly surfing the net in the library one afternoon, thinking, “should I, shouldn’t I write that essay today?”  Just along from me there was a poor, terrified young woman, sitting in tears staring blindly, between muffled sobs, at a computer screen.  She was surrounded by concerned friends, attempting to reassure her.  The problem was her essay was due tomorrow.  She hadn’t been to the lectures as she had found herself indisposed on several occasions, which she was sure were caused by food safety issues at the numerous bars she had been visiting.  Not only had she not attended lectures but she had been unable to read the course material thanks to frequent violent headaches she had suffered.

To be frank, the poor girl sounded quite ready for an early grave; that or she’d been burning a lot of midnight oil for all the wrong reasons.  Her friends, cooed, patted and reassured her, all she needed to do was copy something off the internet and just change all the “ands” and “buts” and the “thes”.  Reassured she took this approach.  A couple of days later when I was back in the library still toying with the idea of actually getting round to my own essay, she was back, dark rings under her reddened eyes, a pile of paperwork next to her and a very, very glum look on her face.  Her friends were nowhere to be seen.

Heck, it sounds like one of those fables doesn’t it?  Sort of a modern day fairy tale told around a flickering screen as a salutary lesson to all the little students everywhere.  Well it’s not; it happened, and is still happening in libraries across the land to this very day.  If it’s happening to you, frequently, one course of action is simply to outsource the task!

Outsourcing Your Essay

The question is, of course, is outsourcing your essay writing wrong?  Well once you’ve left world of university you’ll get a job at some point, it might be a while in the current climate, so don’t hold your breath.  With a degree behind you might reasonably end up managing people, which is a bit like outsourcing.  Using professionals to write your essay is known in the world of business as “delegating”.  At university as well as in the world of work, it’s normally best to play to your strengths and if essay writing isn’t one of them, then outsourcing makes sense.

So when and how to use outsourcing?

Basically, the when is ideally not at the last minute; if you are planning on using a professional essay writer it also makes sense to keep doing it.  Lecturers, tutors and professors are not as daft as they seem at first glance.  They will know your writing style and abilities, so an essay that appears out of nowhere will not go unnoticed.  They will not think that you have spent sleepless nights carefully honing your essay style and presentation.  They’ll smell a rat.  Outsourcing works best if you study, do the research and then provide your writer with the information they need to write a professional essay.  A sample of your previous essays doesn’t go amiss, so that they can try to emulate your own style of writing.  If you are starting out at Uni working with a writer from the start will mean that you “produce” consistent essays throughout your educational career.

Essay writing may or may not be your best point.  When those unexpected deadlines creep up on you it can be worth hiring a professional essay writer to complete the work and help to keep your marks on target.

Actually, don’t.  No, really don’t.

I’ve tried leaving a shiny silver coin under my keyboard in the past, in a vain attempt to distract the Typo Fairy.  She doesn’t seem in the least bit interested and would much prefer to nick off with the “t” from not or the “m” from them.  She’s a devil for it and she’s been known to rob whole words from a sentence.  Somewhere there is a massive pile of commas and/or apostrophes, missing consonants and a vault full of vowels.  I’m certain she carries a sack of “theirs” just to have one handy to substitute for “there’s” whenever she gets the chance.  I long since stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy, but when it comes to the Typo Fairy, I’m afraid to say she’s alive, kicking and living under a keyboard near you.   So, for those of us who make a living from writing, what are the alternatives to silver bullets, crucifixes, garlic and stakes?

Heil Spell Check*

Spell check is basically the bane of my life; I can’t live with it and I can’t live without it.  The problem with spell check is it’s a bit like a guard dog that ignores the postman and attacks your granny.  It spots miss-spelt words but it also spots made up words, which is annoying if you’re a creative writer or need to use dialogue.  Spell check’s a bit fascist too; it likes its rules and it can’t abide it when you break them.  As in all areas of life, sometimes rules need to be broken in writing.  Spell check has its uses but it’s not unlike a security camera pointing in one direction only.

*Talk about sensitive, it doesn’t like Heil at all.

Talking to yourself

Allegedly, this is a sign of madness but it’s also a sign that you work as a writer.  Reading a text aloud will not only help to highlight the fact that a sentence just sounds plain wrong, but may just make you realise that the Typo Fairy has been using the “five fingered discount shopping” approach on your text.  Even if, like me, you sometimes have to read a word four times before you realise someone’s made away off with the correct version, reading aloud really can help.

Reference Material

I recently read a post where a professional writer admitted he didn’t have a dictionary.  Dictionaries are pretty useless these days, when the online version is so readily available.  Mostly dictionaries are out of date before the assistant in the bookshop has popped it in a bio-degradable, re-usable, recyclable receptacle for you.  They’re often out of date a few minutes after they fall off the printing press.  Grammar reference books are of more use, if you need to brush up your skills from time to time (every other day? Is that normal?).  Grammar rules don’t generally change quite as quickly as language itself.  Whatever Waterstone’s/Waterstones want you to believe!

Make Like the Chinese*

Read backwards when doing the final proofread.  This doesn’t help checking the flow of a text but it does help to spot where you-know-who has been making her sticky fingered way across a text.  The brain is a marvellous thing; marvellously lazy.  It’ll fill in letters, blank spaces and, given the chance, it’ll start thinking about something else and before you know it you’re on Twitter.  By reading backwards you’ll be forcing it to read the words properly, letter by letter, just like the Typo Fairy does.

*If you’re Chinese, make like the Westerner.

Use a Second Pair of Eyes.

No, I don’t mean rush out and have some weird, probably available, genetic and/or cosmetic modification.  Get somebody else to read your text.  This is by far the best way to effectively proofread, it’s not something that many copywriters have the luxury of doing, so in that case just take a break, get some fresh air and come back to the work.  If possible it’s probably even better to proofread the day after you’ve written a text.  It may be just me, but that pesky Typo Fairy seems to really go to work on a text at night, just when you thought it was all nice and tucked up in your ‘completed/proofed’ folder.

And Weirdly.

I’ve just finished proof reading this article and it was absolutely ridden with typos.  I wonder if it’s bad luck to cross the Typo Fairy?  Well, hopefully, one day, they’ll invent an App or a spray to rid us of the damn creature but, in the meantime, I wouldn’t bother clapping your hands if you believe in her, she’s probably not that far away.

Ghost writing is such a strange word that you imagine ghosts sitting at computer writing, but this isn’t the case at all. Before I get onto the spooky side, let me tell you exactly what this writing is all about. Maybe once you understand it, you can then understand why it can appear scary and even petrifying at times.

What it’s All About

This is a service offered by professional writers, often they are copywriting companies and in some cases there are freelancers who will work on blogs, articles, books and manuscripts. Some famous authors have used this service to get more books on the shelves. A ghost writer will write on behalf of another person, they seldom get credit or recognised for the work they do.

These professionals use their words to sound exactly like the other person. For example a person who runs a blog may not have time to write regularly, they will use a ghost writing service to write the blog for them using their tone of voice and their way of writing, so the readers never have any idea that they didn’t write it themselves. It sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? But in fact this is not an easy job, it requires hours upon hours of research and the ability to write just like someone else.

The Spooky Side of Writing

Now for the scary and spooky side of the job. Some of these ghost writers have had to write for prisoners who have been locked away for years. These people have done some horrific things in their time so it’s no surprise they’ve been locked up and the key thrown away. These writers will write the autobiography of these hardened criminals, research their past and the spooky things they did, they then place this onto paper and the criminal takes the credit.

While the writer doesn’t get credit for the work that they do, it’s a professional art to be able to accomplish this. The job isn’t always easy and in some cases just plain scary depending on what they are writing about or who they are writing for.

Some of these ghost writing services are used by authors of horror stories and thrillers. These authors need to get more books on the shelf, so it makes sense to use the writing services available to them in order to do this. But you can imagine some of the things that have been written about. Spooky horror stories that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, or thrillers that will have you on the edge of your seat in anticipation.

Hair Raising Research

Every day writers sit down in front of their computers and write for other people, they will never be acknowledged for the work they do, sometimes dangerous work with hair raising research. What you will never know is that the author that loads the work never wrote it themselves whether it’s a thriller, a horror story or the autobiography of the world’s worst serial killer.

So if you’ve ever wondered what ghost writing is all about, now you know. It can be scary, it can be spooky, it can be hair rising and it can be death defying. Every writer has their own sense of style, they use words to string sentences together to captivate the audience, these writers have the hard task of doing this to someone else’s request, they need to use someone else’s tone of voice and make their work sound just like the person that hired them. Not an easy task for anyone to accomplish. So we need to take our hats off to these brave writers who work with spooky situations every day.

Ghost writing is an art form, a way with words that merges together with another writer so you can’t tell the difference between the two.

Have you been dreaming of that warm and sunny resort on an island in a tropical paradise or maybe visiting the Eiffel Tower of Paris, travel writers visit these beautiful locations every day from their offices.

I love travel writing, it takes me to places I have never been, gives me insight into distant lands which I have only dreamed of visiting and offers me a picture of what to expect should I ever decide to visit. From the comfort of my office and with the use of my computer, I write travel articles almost every day. I’ve written on almost every country from Africa to America and Fiji to Thailand.

While I don’t work for a large publishing house that pops me on a plane and sends me off to these areas to find out more, I rely on research to take me to these wonderful places and show me the sights.

Visit Different Countries from Your Computer

I love what I do; I sit down at my computer each morning with my cup of coffee and visit different countries, cities and sights. I get to see them for myself as I research on the place I write about today. It’s a fantastic way to travel without any expense and while I haven’t physically been to any of these areas, I can tell you all there is to know about them.

I’ve been to San Diego, San Francisco, Mexico, Paris, Palm Springs, Indian Wells, Fiji, Thailand and South Africa. I’ve played volley ball on Camps Bay Beach in Cape Town, I’ve been to the top of the Eiffel Tower and enjoyed the views, I’ve been to Balboa Park in San Diego and seen the zoo and safari park and I’ve been to the Coachella Fest in Palm Springs.

I have a great life, I visit different places daily, and I see different things, learn about different cultures and meet interesting people. I sit and research all day long and imagine myself on the ferry to the Coronado Island off San Diego or I enjoy a bus ride to one of the villages in Thailand.

Research Is Imperative

Travel writing is an art and one you cannot get wrong, so research is imperative if you have never visited there. But I love this research, I feel like I’ve really been to these  places and visited the sights, I know all there is to know about the museums and how to get there, I can tell you what exhibitions are showing at what museums or galleries and I’ve even enjoyed the rides at Disneyland.

You don’t have to physically go to a country in order to do travel writing; you just need the patience to research and the imagination to put you there. If you can find the right research and get a full picture of the area, then writing will come naturally as you enjoy the feeling of being there and doing all the fun things those tourists would do.

Did you know that I have been scuba diving in Spain, I’ve snow boarded in Canada and I’ve bungee jumped in South Africa? I’ve climbed to the top of the famous Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa and I’ve been shark cage diving. But best of all, I’ve strolled along the sandy shores of Mission Bay in San Diego and enjoyed the boutique shops on Rodeo Drive.

When it comes to travel writing it’s all about imagination. If you can picture yourself there as you do your research, you can write about it. The beauty, the views, the scenery and the activities. You can base your words around the city and place the reader there before they decide to visit. It’s a wonderful way to play with words and love what you do.

Everyone has a website these days; if you don’t you don’t stand a change as online marketing is the only way forward in this technological era. But it’s not just having a website that will attract customers, it’s the way the website is laid out, the pictures you use and the website content you use.

Imagine the excitement and enjoyment you get from watching a firework display. The bright colours, the loud bangs and the beauty of the display are something that everyone loves to watch. Now get back to your website, the content needs to have the same impact on your readers. Your content needs to grasp them, hold them there, intrigue them and then make them buy.

Now you may think I’m crazy comparing a website to a firework display, but this is the only way to make anyone understand the importance of their website content.  As a firework display starts a stream of lights shoot into the air exploding into beautiful and colourful designs. You can’t take your eyes off them; these are one thing everyone will watch in awe as the display goes on.

Your Website Needs to Grasp Your Customer

Now your website content needs to have the same appeal. It needs to grasp the customer, make them want to read more, interest them and then get them to buy. If your content is boring then your customer will just move on, so how do you keep them there? How do you turn your website into a spectacular firework display?

Start by choosing a website layout which is easy to navigate and beautiful in design. A boring web design will not help you against the thousands of competitors online. Remember you aren’t only competing against other businesses in your own area, with the internet you are competing against all businesses in your industry, as they all trade globally so buyers can purchase from anywhere around the world.

Snappy, User Friendly Design

Once you have a snappy design which is user friendly and captivating, you can move onto your images. Clear images which are appealing to the eye are as important as the writing you place on the pages. The pictures need to be eye catching, clear and captivating.

Then it comes down to one of the most important parts of your website, the website content. This is the writing on your pages which can’t be boring. They need to be informative, interesting, appealing, captivating, inspiring and most of all keep your buyer on your page for as long as possible.

When you go onto a website which is drab and boring, you’re not going to read the whole page are you? You’re going to move along to the next site which offers you the interest you get when you watch a firework display, this is why it’s so important to ensure your website content offers that to the readers.

Make the Most Boring Product Spectacular

The best way to do this is to hire professional writing companies, people who do this for a living, people who love words and have a way with words to make the most boring subject interesting. Not everyone has the ability to do this and that’s why in some cases spending a little money to hire a professional can go a long way in the long run.

Every day these writers sit down and produce exceptional website content for businesses all over the world, businesses that understand the importance and impact their website will have on a potential customer and businesses that understand their website needs to pop in order to be seen.

If you want to ensure your website content is as good as a spectacular firework display, you may want to consider hiring a professional writing company that can produce the best quality copy for you to entice readers and make them buy.

There is nothing more exciting than being given a box of chocolates as a gift, you open the box in anticipation to see what chocolates are inside, this is the feeling proofreading professionals go through every day of their lives, they never know what they are going to get.

It’s easy to compare proofreading with a box of chocolates because every writer is different; they all have different styles of writing, different topic ideas and different ways of expressing themselves. For a proof reader this is exciting, they enjoy a varied day filled with change, excitement and anticipation.

Proofreading is a very important part of any writing process, it’s imperative to ensure the writing is of the highest quality without any punctuation or grammatical errors. Every writer makes mistakes that are why proof readers are there, they are responsible for ensuring everything is perfect.

Everyone Makes Mistakes

Now it’s not only blog and article writers who make mistakes, the top authors can make mistakes too, it’s a common error for many of us who work with words all day long. The importance of proofreading a piece of writing work can make all the difference. You can’t load a blog with spelling errors or punctuation errors, it gives the business a bad look and if you can’t be bothered to proof read your work before loading then imagine what your service or products are like.

Opening a box of chocolates is filled with anticipation, what you are going to find inside the box and what does it have in store for you. Compare this to proofreading and you can imagine what these professionals deal with on a daily basis. They pour over writing pieces from writers all day long, checking the writing for any errors and checking it to ensure that it is original work.

Originality is Key

Originality is key in the writing world, you cannot copy another writer’s work, and this is completely unsavoury and leaves a sour taste in your mouth. A chocolate is sweet, the chocolate melts against your tongue giving you a warm feeling of pleasure. This is what writing should do for the proof-reader, they should be in awe of the writing, enjoy every word and take pleasure in the fact that there are no errors and the work is completely original, just what you would expect from a top rated author or writing professional.

The Out of Date Box of Chocolates

Unfortunately this isn’t always the case and the proof reader may end up with an out of date box of chocolates which has been copied over and over, a rewritten piece of work that copies all the foundations of the original work of another writer. This is a disappointment, it entails a lot of work for the proofreading professional and requires hours of amendments for the writer, not a professional place to be in.

After a long day of pouring over writing pieces the person doing all the proofreading eventually can stop for the night, open up a box of chocolates at home and remember the day they faced. Each bite into a chocolate will remind them of a piece of writing they read, maybe the hazelnut cluster will remind them of the funny and nutty article they approved while the Turkish delight was like the tangy and exciting piece they read.

So often you stop and wonder what proof readers really do, why they are so important and at what point do you need one.  Well imagine your blog as a box of chocolates, each post is different and filled with valuable information. You load these blogs regularly to keep them up to date only to read back later and find errors in your spelling, not a good place to be in.

Proofreading is an essential part of the writing process to ensure that all the work loaded onto the internet is of the highest quality without any errors.