Could you use some (gentle) eyes on your writing?

It is really very hard to see ourselves from the inside. It is also really very hard to see ourselves from the outside. And that is why — even if you’re a strong writer (even a professional writer!) — the most difficult writing is the writing you do about yourself. Because you’re so in your work, you may not know what questions people outside of it have that need answering, but also, because your work is so much an expression of who you are, you may also be unable to see its exact shape and edges, making it hard to describe.

Using the website writing workbooks in the Pink Elephant Writing Academy Bookstore will ensure you answer your readers’ questions and will inspire you to get much clearer in your own understanding of your work, but when you’re done, you might want an extra set of eyes to look things over, and maybe an extra set of typing figures to play with the words. My Gentle Wordsmithing service may be the thing that takes you from draft to final copy, more quickly. I don’t want you to feel on your own with all of this stuff, if you don’t want to be.

My Gentle Wordsmithing service is for those who have written first drafts of their homepage or about page using Pink Elephant Writing Academy workbooks and who desire a little extra polish. They’re not sure it still makes sense, or that it reads as well as it could? Maybe it feels too long but they’re not sure what to cut? Or the section about the service itself feels too vague…

It might be easier to tell you, first, what it isn’t. It isn’t just proofreading — where I would check your writing for spelling and grammatical errors and make only those corrections (although it does, of course, include that). And it isn’t original copywriting, where I would create something for you from scratch. It’s a magical in-between service. Because you are using my workbooks, the “raw material” you send me will already include all the content I need and in a framework that is solid and familiar so it’s much less work for me than writing something from nothing. I fix any grammar and spelling stuff first, and then I edit it so it sounds like something I could have written from scratch — but in your voice. I rephrase and reword and reorder — with a light hand — to give you a draft that says what I think you really mean. I translate and intuit and give you a freshened-up version that is totally original to you, for much less than you would have paid me to do all the work from start to finish, but with the same outcome, because you’re willing to do the first big chunk of work for us. I think it’s kind of clever.

You follow the exercises in your copy of How to Write a Lovable Homepage workbook and/or The All-important, Easy-peasy About Page workbook to complete your own draft. When you’ve got it ready for wordsmithing, contact us and Christine will ask you for your Word doc and your workbook receipt and once she has both, she will invoice you for the Gentle Wordsmithing service. When payment has been received, I’ll start writing, and within a few (business) days, you’ll have a new homepage or about page (or both) ready for you to upload to your website.

Unlike the full Pink Elephant Creative done-for-you website writing service, I want to be clear that this does not include any meetings with me by phone or email, or any revisions. If you’d like me to make further changes, incorporating your feedback, then that time would be billable at $200/hour, and all of your feedback would need to be provided in writing, tracked within the document (which is always the policy for writing projects so we can keep things in one place). My expectation, though, is that if something is feeling off with the draft I send you, that you will feel confident to polish it to be more “you” without me, and without further expense (since it’s your own writing we’re working from — hooray!).

$497CAD per page. The limit for each draft is 750 words to be kept within the flat rate. If you write much more, not to worry, we’d just adjust the price to reflect the extra time on my end before we start. Keep your receipt as this business service is a taxable expense.

Take note, kind reader: there are no refunds.

Because we’re starting with your own work, I’m hopeful it would be difficult to get very far off-track but because there are no refunds, this, like any creative collaboration, requires a leap of faith. If this happy little creative gamble feels too risky to you, please don’t hire me for this. Let’s only do work together that feels very good. I don’t want you to worry.

If you would rather have the work written for you, I love to do that too, and can also write the full site so — with your input and feedback — you get much more content that requires less of your own time and energy. That’s a service I offer at Pink Elephant Creative.

Step 1. Purchase your workbook.
Step 2. Complete the workbook writing exercises to write your draft.
Step 3. Contact Christine to get started.