It’s an art, not a chore

Content Writing – It’s been almost a decade since writing has become my bread and butter. The decade long journey has been a great learning experience. But I still can’t wrap my head around disturbing trivialization of the art of content writing. Even the knowledgeable clients and managers are guilty of taking an assembly line approach and overlooking the research and thinking that has to go into each project. From a writer’s point of view, this is silly and laughable, to say the least.

Quality writing is hard and time consuming. You cannot simply throw some words on a paper and call it content. But despite leaving no stones unturned to help the bigwigs above the ladder understand this simple rationale, never have I succeeded in any of my attempts. The repetitive question pops up at every meeting and I remain dumbstruck wondering how to deal with the barrage of “How long is it going to take?” queries. “It depends,” is the utmost honest reply that I can give, but no manager or client would wholeheartedly accept it as an answer for this titular question. The intricacy augments further when I am left with no basic information on a project or the niche a client is into. I will leave that for another post.

As diverse as each project is, so is the time required for research and writing of each one of them.  I envy writers who take an hour or two to write an impressive post.  I take a bit longer, or sometimes sleep on it before finalizing the copy.  This blog is a simple and sincere response to all those who've pitied on my “incapability” to set time-frame for quality and plagiarism-free content writing. Content writing is more than throwing words down on a paper. Quality content writing is an art, and it’s very difficult to quantify how much work and time will go into it. “Good” is never the same for everyone, so is the time to write “good content”. It’s is not a simple errand, and involves several steps such as research, competitor analysis, actual content writing, proofreading and optimization, and so on. Simply put, content writing is neither an overnight process, nor easy as writing a check.

Many times, I get compelled to crank out content without a little breather. I am a perfectionist and it definitely causes unfathomable anguish every time I fail to fine tune my work for lack of time. I’ve gotten shouted down even before expressing time constraint or inadequacy of basic facts. I’ve been ridiculed and repeatedly vilified as untalented and incompetent whenever I tried to cite the necessity of time. The scoffs were hurting and insulting at the start, but over the years, I’ve learned to take it on the chin and move on. Because, I know what I do and what I do works well and pays off for my clients, though they never acknowledge it aloud.