Code-Switching and the Freelance Writer

Repost/Revision

Image from writania.com

When you make your living as a freelance writer, you need to be able to turn on a dime in terms of style. One day, you might have a deadline on an academic journal article in which you need to observe strict MLA style. The next day, your assignment may be a short blog post for an entertainment website; now you have to shift gears dramatically, writing in a relaxed, conversational tone. Challenging to say the least-- and one of many reasons that flexibility is one of the most essential secrets to freelance success.

Some writers’ natural writing voices are quite colloquial; the reader almost feels as if the author is in the room with her, having a conversation. At the other end of the spectrum are those whose voices are naturally academic or “highbrow.” Most fall somewhere along the spectrum between these two poles.

It’s an open question among writers to what degree writing should mimic speech in any given forum. The real ninjas, I think, are the ones who manage to sound conversational (in those media in which it’s appropriate) while observing all the rules of English grammar, spelling and usage. These writers understand that the secret of coming across as both accessible and professional lies in the rare synthesis of conversational style and flawless grammar.

Very few people speak in sentences that could be transcribed word-for-word and used in an article or blog post without some editing. Writing that concept for a “middlebrow” medium, you might write, “No one’s grammar is perfect when they’re having a conversation-- they have to make some adjustments when they put the words on paper.” If you were expressing the same thought in an academic journal, it might appear as, “Few people observe strict grammatical rules in colloquial speech; expressing the same ideas in print, they need to make the necessary adjustments to fit the new forum.”

But what if you were expressing the same idea in a highly informal setting, such as an entertainment or fashion blog? There, you might well get away with, “Hey, not many of us are walking English textbooks, right? We’ve got to make some changes when we write things down!” The fact is that all three of these examples are grammatically correct, even if the third might be a stretch in terms of usage. The important thing is that readers in any of these forums would clearly understand the idea without the jarring effect of having one style substituted for the other. For instance, imagine how thrown a reader of People Magazine would feel coming across the “few people observe strict grammatical rules...” sentence above. in the context of a People Magazine article. By the samw token, a reader of Scientific American would no doubt find “Hey, not many of us are walking English textbooks” equally jarring.

My own natural writing voice tends toward the formal end of the spectrum: phrases such as “highly colloquial setting” and “the rare synthesis of colloquial style and flawless grammar” pretty much give that away. Other writers have much more conversational voices. There’s no “right or wrong” here; the essential thing (again) is flexibility. Unless you’re getting all your work from a single source, a good deal of code-switching is going to be necessary.

Of course, none of this quite takes into consideration the unique degree of flex required of the ghostwriter. To succeed, ghostwriters have to carefully read all their clients’ correspondence and attend closely to their patterns of speech. This is because the stakes are higher here: people who know the “author” personally have to believe she could have written the article or manuscript herself; otherwise the ghostwriter has failed at his most important task. If words and phrases completely alien to the client start cropping up in a manuscript, people who communicate with her regularly are going to have their doubts about the authorship.

Contrasting and comparing patterns of speech with the production of grammatically-correct prose is a source of inexhaustible fascination for wordsmiths. Or to put it another way, Dude! Those grammar wonks never get tired of checking out the way people write and talk, right?

Perhaps something in between.

Best regards,

William K. Ferro

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

New Favorite Yoga Quote

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“As on the mat, so off the mat.”

This is my new favorite quote; I know it’s well-known to most yoga devotees. It can be applied to so much in life: on the mat, you need to be limber and flexible; so must you be in your daily life. If you’re struggling too much in your yoga routine and forcing yourself to hold poses that your body clearly doesn’t want to, there’s a problem. The same principle holds for life in general, and applies to mental constructs, belief systems, habits and routines.

I’ve discovered that when I’m struggling unduly with some aspect of my life--be it relationships, work, or whatever--there’s almost always something fundamentally wrong with my approach to it. If I’m busting to make ends meet and suffering headaches, insomnia, and so on, something in my approach to my work, spending habits, and/or self-discipline is usually out of whack.  

Similarly, any time I find myself in a twist about a relationship, the way someone else is behaving, or the way things are going globally, I need to reassess my approach. In the first and second case, I’m probably trying to force someone into a predetermined role that doesn’t fit his/her personality. In the third, I’m taking on responsibility for the way things are that simply isn’t mine to claim (the things we are responsible for are more than enough!).

I’ve come to terms with the fact that there are a few asanas I will probably never completely master. This isn’t defeatism, but an embrace of reality; no one practitioner can do all things equally well. This kind of reality check is great for our daily lives as well: if we spend most of our energy focusing on projects for which we have limited aptitude, we’ll probably miss out on developing our abilities in our high-aptitude areas.

“As on the mat, so off the mat.”

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

Counting Our Blessings

Image from gratitudehabit.com

Cultivating a Grateful Mindset

When I’d get in a grumbling mood as a kid, I remember my mother advising me to “count [my] blessings.” Her parents had lived through the Great Depression, so awareness of the possibility of scarcity had filtered down to her. My generation of Americans--most of us, anyway--were so far removed from that mindset that we took material comforts for granted. I remember (like so many in my generation) hearing grandparents and other adults saying, “you kids have no idea how good you’ve got it!” We all heard the stories about how tough times were in days gone by, but it remained largely an abstraction for us.

We still tend to take a great deal for granted. A look at the Facebook page First World Problems (http://first-world-problems.com/) is a humorous eye-opener. People there make ironic comments such as these:

“I had to wait a whole minute for my money to come out of the ATM today!”

“My plane seat was so uncomfortable, I got a crick in my neck!”

The implication being that we take for granted that we put a little card in a machine and it spits money out at us and that we’re flying in one hour to a city it would take us a whole day to drive to!

Accordingly, I’m compiling a list of “Things to Be Happy About.”

We’ll start with the basics and move up the hierarchy of needs.

-- Food, water, shelter, and medicine.

These are things people in the developing world may or may not have on any given day. Not a guilt trip, just a fact.

-- Central heating and air conditioning.

For those same individuals, heat means keeping a fire going, or if they’re fortunate, a wood-burning stove. Air conditioning is fanning yourself with a palm frond.

-- Multiple forms of powered transportation. Most families in the developed world own more than one car.

-- Multiple forms of home entertainment: cable or satellite television (often, units on each floor of the home), multiple stereo systems, desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and so on.

You get the idea: Mom was right; there are just too many “blessings” to count! Let’s not let this induce feelings of guilt, but rather a sense of gratitude and a desire to share with those less fortunate than we are.