My homepage began with the words “Congratulations!” and “Hi”. It’s really not me, so why did I write it?

At the time it felt like I was projecting the right image but with age and increasing confidence (and skill) I knew it was time to change.

What you see now is a pared down version. I’ve done away with the overly-excited hyperbole greeting. I’ve added a photo so you know I like to drink tea. (Ooh, I’m so British!)

I hope you all like the updated pages. I was nervous about changing them because it felt like an omission of guilt, that the original copy wasn’t good enough. But I’ve changed. My writing is better now after a few more years’ practice. So why shouldn’t I make my site better? Why not embrace those changes and show how I’ve progressed?

It’s like getting a different hair cut or wearing a dress when you normally live in jeans. It’s OK if it makes you happy. We are made to evolve.

A book review by Ellie Stevenson.

Imagine waking up one morning to an empty house.

There should be people there, your parents and your brother, but they’re not. You’re a little worried, but not that much.

Until you learn your brother isn’t at school, and when you get home, they’re all still missing. So where is everyone?

To make matters worse, the night before, you came home drunk, having been dragged away from your boyfriend’s car by your father. He was mad, and so were you.

You can’t remember much of what happened. And now they’re gone. And you’re only 14.

Fast forward 25 years.

***

That was Cynthia. Now she’s married with a daughter of her own.

 And a TV crew who want to replay her terrible past. They want stories, she wants completion, but what they get are bodies. Lots of them.

 Her husband Terry wants to support her. But someone’s lying and he doesn’t know who. It might be several someones. Who can he trust?

•  Her aunt Tess, who tells him in confidence that a mystery donor paid Cynthia’s ‘school’ fees?
• Rolly Carruthers, her surrogate ‘uncle’ who could know more than he’s letting on?
• Her father, Clayton, who according to official records doesn’t exist?
• Cynthia herself, whose own stories are inconsistent?

 And so it goes on.

Linwood Barclay knows how to tell them. No Time for Goodbye is his first stand alone thriller. It’s fast and furious, a real page turner. In the end everything could be alright but you can’t be sure. What if Cynthia’s not who she says she is? Will Terry’s faith be justified?  Will it all fall apart? Read it and see.

It’s a roller coaster ride.

The plot thickens when strange messages start to appear. And a hat turns up on the kitchen table.

They hire a PI but he’s surprisingly ineffective. Then there’s the puzzle of the hit and run. And just when you think Terry has enough to deal with, Cynthia vanishes and he’s left to cope alone. Or with some very dodgy company. Will he survive? Will Cynthia?

And what about the missing family? Terry’s still trying to trace them. Will he succeed? And if he does, will he like what he finds?

 Read it and see.

Linwood Barclay No Time for Goodbye, Orion, 2008

 When you’ve finished the novel, don’t draw breath. There are several more of his books to go.

 If you can stand the pace.

No. I am not a typist and I spell copywriter with a ‘w’ and no ‘gh’. I explain myself as best I can – which isn’t always very well depending how embarrassed I feel at the time or how tipsy I feel if I’m in a pub. Consequently I thought it might be useful (and appropriate) to write it all down in a blog post.

Writing

Unsurprisingly, a lot of what I do is based around writing. But as Tom rightly pointed out, there’s a lot more to it than that!

Articles and long copy:

I have a couple of clients that I write long articles for. One client typically requires up to 3000 word articles, another prefers them to be around 800 words in length. I get a lot of satisfaction from writing long copy. I pick a topic and an angle, research, write and edit. You can see examples of some of these articles on the Media 140 website here.

Other recent long copy projects include writing a company prospectus and creating health, exercise and nutrition advice for a weight loss clinic.

Blogs:

I’m a prolific blogger – not just on this site but also for clients and my local Social Media Café. For some time now I’ve represented The Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE) and I’m proud to be their chosen author for the blog which features on Yell.com.

Twitter:

I help some of my clients manage their Twitter accounts by tweeting on their behalf and offering advice on engagement and good practice.

Web copy:

From time to time I am also asked to produce copy for websites. This copy is always optimised for search engines and generally my clients also want plenty of calls to action.

SEO:

Sometimes clients want to write their own copy but they need advice on search engine optimisation. I work with a partner company to produce SEO analysis and advice, either as a one-off or as an ongoing project.

Proofreading and editing

Editing and proofreading are the other side of the copywriting coin. I don’t just write – I also tidy up other people’s writing.

Proofreading:

I’ve provided proofreading services for web copy belonging to a wide range of clients from SMEs to absolutely enormous corporations. This means I fix typos, grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. It includes things like checking for homophones and making sure that every instance of ‘there’, ‘they’re’ and ‘their’ is correct.

Editing:

I’ve also edited business correspondence and academic essays which can be very challenging but equally satisfying when you can put things right! I think of editing as a kind of heavy-duty proofreading. As well as fixing all the mistakes I normally would for proofreading, I also alter the structure, layout and even cut and add content if necessary.

So now you know

If you’re looking for a typist, don’t get in touch. If you’re looking for someone who writes blog posts, long copy or offers editing services – check out my contact page!

PS. If you’re looking for services not covered here you can still get in touch as I may be able to refer you. I have strong ties with a top quality web development company, a digital PR specialist, a multimedia designer, a social media expert and a few other useful people in Cheltenham!

If you’ve ever had trouble communicating please sponsor me! If you haven’t, think about how awful life would be if you did and then sponsor me! I hate running but I’m doing the Adidas 5k Women’s Challenge because I believe in the cause. Now, who’s with me?

Go to http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/RachelPictor and sponsor me!

I’m new to running (apart from some hellish experiences in my school years) so I’ll be buying trainers, checking my running gait and probably jogging around Stroud looking like an idiot for the next few weeks. My sister is running too and I’ll let you know if she puts a sponsorship page online. I figured if you were happy to sponsor me you might as well sponsor her as well! I may even update you periodically with details of my training progress which I’m sure will be fascinating.

If you’d like to send me training tips feel free to leave them as comments at this post or tweet me if your tip is 140 characters or less!

At school, I got in trouble for being a pedant.

Friends would enthusiastically push their essays under my nose and say “what do you think of that?” When they realised I thought it was good, except for “the missing full stop here, the spelling errors here and the poor syntax almost everywhere” they didn’t seem so happy. Even if I could tell what they were trying to say and thought the ideas were really great, the observation of spelling and grammatical errors always dampened the mood.

I was a geek, a boffin. I was the party-pooper highlighting errors and inaccuracies while everyone else just wanted to get on with stuff. It didn’t make me popular and it didn’t make a great impression on fellow students. Outside of school, I find there are still a large number of people who don’t consider good spelling and grammar a top priority. I’m fine with this, so long as these people aren’t relying on their writing skills as part of their job.

If you work in customer service and need to write letters, every spelling error, typo, or grammatical clanger will be posted out as a representation of your entire company. If you paint signs on the road, any misspelling will reflect badly on your employer. If you work in marketing, PR or copywriting, it can be the kiss of death to your career! I have seen or heard about all of these things happening to all kinds of people.

Whilst it’s true that writing ‘their’ when you meant to write ‘there’ won’t bring about the apocalypse, it will create a bad impression of you and your company for the people reading it. Every blog post I publish puts my reputation on the line just as much as every piece of work I submit to clients. It’s the same for all forms of written communication that people use in the course of their everyday business. Not everyone will notice the occasional small error but they can change the meaning of an entire article or distract us from what the writer is trying to say.

Conversely, we’ve all come across pieces of writing that are just perfect. Writing that is easy to read and understand, engaging, with a nice flow or rhythm. This is good writing – using grammar carefully and breaking the rules only to create special effects.

If you’re worried about your use of grammar and spelling it might be worth investing in a proofreader. They can highlight any inaccuracies and assess your writing in a way that automatic spell checkers can’t.

Alternatively, you could go back to school, read some books or maybe go on a writing course?

If you’d like to ask questions about grammar or share your own ‘favourite’ grammatical bugbears please use the comments section at the bottom of this post. If you’d like to hire me for a proofreading or copywriting job then get in touch!

This is because I’m a pedant.

If you’re not concerned about the details you needn’t read on. You may discover I was one of those annoying kids at school who read your essay or short story and said “I like it but you missed a comma here and you’ve used the wrong instance of ‘there’ on page 4, paragraph 2, in the third sentence.” And yes, I am aware that that was a ridiculously long sentence! I would never do that on a piece of advertising or web copy or even in a novel.

But I digress.

I have often had cause to visit websites which are set up to promote a business. Some of these websites are aimed at selling the services of SEO experts (which I dabble in on behalf of Firehoop). Some of these websites are for other businesses like hotels or personal trainers. Like any person who uses the web for work or recreation, I get around a lot! Unfortunately, it also means I see typos a lot!

Sometimes I even get emails full of them – from copywriters and so-called ‘communications experts’ alike.

For any of my online copywriter friends reading this, I should point out, it’s not you. If it was a friend I would just point it out – especially if it appeared on their website! I’m not going to name any culprits but if you know me and talk to me on Twitter (or you happen to have published one of my guest posts) then I consider you a friend and it’s definitely not you!

I guess that doesn’t narrow it down much. Maybe it’s you? Maybe it’s your site that’s full of typos? Have you checked? It’s not good for business you know! Just imagine what sort of impression you’re creating.

All too often at work and in my life in general I come across bad spelling, bad grammar and sloppy typing. Some things just need a quick tidy up whereas some are almost illegible but even if you’re confident with your writing it’s worth getting somebody to take a look with fresh eyes. If they’re as pedantic as me it’ll be time and money well spent!

I read a news article that deeply upset me yesterday. It was about a girl who couldn’t see or hear and the woman who was supposed to be looking after her had left her outside overnight, strapped into a pushchair. In the morning, the girl was found, still in her pushchair which had fallen over. Her face was pressed into the ground and she was taken to hospital suffering badly from hypothermia. I imagine that as time went on and the girl realised she had been abandoned she tried to wriggle free and ended up tipping her chair over. The article did not make clear whether or not the girl was capable of speech or making any noise at all. Clearly if she had been able to shout – even an unintelligible noise – it had gone unnoticed which is why she had tried to save herself.

For people like me who can see and hear this scenario is hard to imagine. Blind people tend to rely heavily on their hearing and deaf people can still communicate visually. If you are deaf and blind how do you communicate?

What happens to people who can’t communicate effectively?

Well, they don’t all end up abandoned with hypothermia thank goodness. And there are a lot of communication issues which can be rectified or assisted if people are given the right help and guidance.

That’s why I’ve adopted a word for I Can – a charity aimed at helping children with communication problems. If the story I related above sent a chill down your spine  or you just love words you can adopt one here! Or find out more about I Can and how they help children here.

Incidentally, the word I’ve adopted is ‘pyrophoric’, which describes any object that catches fire when exposed to air. It’s probably normally used in laboratories but I like to think of it in terms of ideas and the dissemination of powerful messages.