Commercial and Creative Writing: Unhappy Bedfellows?

It may seem like commercial writing and creative writing should sit at opposite ends of a long table, probably pretending not to hear when the other one asks them to pass the salt.

Many writers freelance as copywriters or proofreaders to pay the bills, but how does this effect their ability, time and motivation to work on their novel or their poetry collection? It can be a difficult balancing job, and can result in a feeling of creative frustration, but you can utilise many of skills that you need for commercial writing for not only assisting your creative writing, but also improving your entire writing life.

• Deadlines - Deadlines can often be difficult things for writers; most of you will know that feeling when you have a deadline looming and all you can do is stare, uninspired, at a blank page. But if you're making your income from writing, if you don't hit that deadline, you don't get paid. Commercial writers need to be good at time management and creating their own motivation; truly invaluable skills for any writer.
• Planning - Not only planning what you're going to write but also, as mentioned above, planning your day. Getting into a writing routine can help to bring your creativity into rhythm, as can setting out goals you want to achieve that day.
• Research - There are all sorts of things you will need to research for a story. Whether you need to research an entire period in history, the layout of a city, or the rules of baseball or the incubation period of malaria. Even if you are a fantasy novelist, you may need to research mythology, religion or herbal remedies. Good research makes a story that much more believable.
• Editing - Commercial writers often work to tight word count limits forcing them to be economical in their word usage and ruthless in their editing. Not only is this a very useful skill for writing short stories, but also for avoiding the urge many writers have to pack their work with every adjective they can think of. More often than not, less really is more.

That's the biggest transferrable skills that you can bring into your creative writing, among the others are people skills, business sense and marketing skills. These days it isn't enough to be a brilliant writer; you also need to be able to market yourself and your work, and that means networking, building relationships and being able to sell yourself. (But that's for another blog post)