Writers' bloc
Published on
Friends, editors, translators lend me your ears.
Today sees the launch a new writing adventure – the brainchild of myself and fellow dreamer, entrepreneur and translator Luke Spear. If the last six months have taught me one fundamental thing it is that in business, as in life, it is useful to have lots of partners.
Whilst there are a myriad of benefits to being self-employed (not least having complete control over your professional life) plodding a lone furrow also leaves you somewhat disadvantaged when compared to a big company.
Happily I am not alone in this, as many of my friends and professional associates are in the same situation. We’ve all suffered the fallow days when no work of any substance has dropped into your inbox and after a tenth cup of coffee you decide to write off the rest of the day and retire to the local pub with the Guardian crossword. Part of the problem with working alone is your relative marketing potential and as you are only one person you are only able to work on a certain number of projects at a time. You are also limited by your linguistic range. How many times has an amazing project come up, but you are unable to take the work on because you do not speak German? Or Finnish? Or Swahili?
Up until now, being the generous soul that I am, I have passed on such jobs to someone who can do the work. Whilst some benevolent folks save the whales, or shake a charity tin, I do my piece for humanity by passing interesting work onto others. But then one day came the Eureka moment; the flashing light bulb. If we pooled our resources, then we could make a bigger dent in what is a pretty huge marketplace. In a world of monoglots and poor quality writing, a business or an association who can wow their clients with the quality of their literature is already one step of the competition.
This is where we come in.
And so it is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of World to Writers - a one stop collective of diligent, dynamic writers, editors and translators. All our members are proverbial scarecrows – outstanding in their fields - and with extensive experience or being published. By working together so we can chase bigger projects and do what so few graduates can claim that they do in the call-centre lobotomy of the global economy – actually use those skills that we picked up at University and feed ourselves doing what we actually enjoy doing.
It is an audacious and bold step that we are taking, but one that has already caught the imagination of a number of high quality writing professionals in our social and professional networks. So if you are interested why not join the revolution?
Comrades. Writers of the world unite!