If you’re a writer, people might ask you to help them with their writing, or even to write something instead of them; a postcard, a note, a product description, a dedication, an email, a letter of recommendation, or even a job application; all sorts of things.
Although I most often accept to help them, sometimes I just have to say that I don’t know how to write everything.
This, sometimes, makes certain people furious. They either question my overall writing abilities or perhaps assume that they don’t matter to me enough.
I had a hard time explaining that not all writing is the same and that I mostly write fiction novels and stories and non-fiction articles which I like to write in conversational style.
Although I have experience in copywriting, travel blogs, news articles and academic writing, my writing skills at these styles are falling far behind my fiction or blogging, which is something I do on a regular basis.
Therefore, if someone asks you do write something for them just because you’re a writer and you’re ‘better with words, than them’, don’t hesitate to say that you can’t write everything and don’t get offended if they tell you that you’re not as much of a writer as they thought you were.
There are countless writing styles out here and each of them requires a different approach, structure and syntax, and they all have different goals.
The goal of a fiction story is mostly entertainment, a non-fiction article or book is education or information, the copywriting is selling, a news article is objective information (at least should be), etc. Sometimes they have several goals, but let’s not go deeply into this now.
The point is that it takes time and practice to master each of these styles and you can’t be good at all of them.