Letter Writing

kandk_2

Hello
I'm a freelance writer, scrabbling around for various ways to utilise my skills. I've been doing some work for an Asian friend of mine, tidying up her English on a small health-care book she's writing, and she passed on to me a letter one of her friends had drafted to a local councillor regarding domestic abuse that she (the writer of the letter) was suffering. I rewrote it for her, correcting bad English, restructuring for greater logic and impact, putting in the correct formal phrases etc, and was paid a small sum for doing so. It struck me that there must be very many people in the position of having to communicate formally with the authorities over some legal or other matter, without having the writing skills to do so in such a way as to be attended to. I assume that various charity organisations, at the interface between individuals with problems and whatever government or local bodies ought to be informed, must run into this situation all the time, and wondered whether anyone here might have any ideas as to who I might approach with the offer of this kind of service. I wish I could do it for free, but I simply can't afford to. My fees are, however, pretty modest, and it does seem to me that there may be a need out there which I can address. Any advice or thoughts on this would be very welcome.

DCFC79

Maybe CAB, you need to work out what services you would offer

Annisele

I think that you might struggle to find people who have poor literacy skills and enough money to pay you a decent wage for your time.

I work for an organisation that sometimes receives some quite bizarre missives from members of the public, but we're used to interpreting unusual language so I'm not sure how much value a service like yours would add. I have on occasion been completely stumped by a letter, but so long as I have the author's phone number it's never been a problem (I can use an interpreter if I need one - no charge to the other party).

KiKi

Annisele wrote: »

I think that you might struggle to find people who have poor literacy skills and enough money to pay you a decent wage for your time.

Whilst I agree with you in principle, my experience (as a writer) is that it's not necessarily poor *literacy* that's the issue, rather making an impact with what's written - or writing it in a way that means something to the audience! I cannot tell you the number of documents that I've rewritten which have been intended for the public, yet were full of jargon, complicated sentences, and made assumptions that the public understood certain legal terms etc.

But OP, Annisele does have a point when it comes to individual customers. It seems that what you might be better to focus on is copyediting / copywriting for businesses rather than individuals. Having a portfolio (to prove your competence) and advertising are probably the way to go here. You could also advertise for personal correspondence (with examples), but I wouldn't focus too much on it. JMO, though!

KiKi

kandk_2

I absolutely take the points that have been made. Basic literacy isn't the issue. it's the ability to word things so that they convey what they're supposed to. And, of course, people in the kind of position I'm talking about don't have the money to pay me - that's why I wondered whether there was any organisation that might want to subsidise the service. I guess probably not. I already do stuff for business clients - just looking for an extra string to my bow.