Can Your Words Change the World?

Many writers don’t realize how their words can change the world. While the average writer may never know the effect of his or her articles, books, or stories, just about all affect their readers in some small way.

As a writer, it’s one job to enhance knowledge and ultimately change the world in which you live and work by publishing a meaningful article on a controversial new topic or by writing a short story or novel that illuminates human frailties. It’s another to affect change.

Early in my career, I wrote an article in a travel trade magazine about Apple Vacations, a travel wholesaler that has since grown by leaps and bounds. A group of people had taken a charter flight with another travel company, which while they were on vacation in the Bahamas, suddenly closed its doors and disconnected its phones, stranding this large group of vacationers. Someone in the office of the travel agent who had booked the charter read my article about Apple Vacations and immediately called them. The representative on the phone connected her to the president of the company who immediately sent one of Apple’s own charter planes to the Bahamas to retrieve the stranded passengers. The travel agency was so overjoyed about the rescue that it switched all of its vacation charter business to Apple Vacations. And I also got a call from Apple’s president thanking me for writing such a good article.

An antique dealer read another of my articles, this one about Parian ware, a less expensive look-alike to marble, and was able to identify a piece in his shop that he had drastically underpriced The information in my article allowed him to make a tidy profit on the piece when he sold it.

The first time your writing affects your reader in a visible way—providing you find out about it—the romance of freelance writing will become clear. When you incorporate the reality of this romance into every thing you write, you’ll begin to realize how rewarding a freelance writing career can be.

But keeping your ego under control is just as important, for success is often fleeting. You may bask in the glow of it for a few minutes, hours, or days, then it’s gone and you have to begin the process once more.

For many writers, the best rewards aren’t monetary, but the satisfaction that perhaps they’ve changed their readers lives for the better.

The Toofer Controversy

The English language changes slightly about every five years. Sometimes, it’s a change in words and at others a change in punctuation or usage. Today, writing in general has been heavily influenced by chatting, texting, and messages on social network sites like Twitter.

Over the last five years, a controversy has arisen about punctuation and the word “too.” Throughout my schooling and my writing career, I always placed a comma before the word “too” when I used it at the end of a sentence.

A few months back I was revising a book of mine–How to Start a Home-Based Antiques Business–when I discovered that all the commas preceding the word “too” had disappeared in the current edition. I asked my editor about them, and she was as baffled as I. So in the revised edition, I replaced all those commas. I have yet to see the published new edition, so I don’t know if the commas mysteriously disappeared again.

Several months later, I noticed those same commas missing in the stories written by some of my creative writing students. This seemed to be more than a chance coincidence, so I did some checking.

It seems that at the moment I, as a writer, have the choice of whether to place a comma before the word “too.” Unlike other English usage practices, this is the only incidence in which I have a choice. So what’s the difference? If I place a comma before the word “too,” it implies that the sentence provides additional information. In this instance, I could substitute the word “also.” But if I delete the comma before the word “too,” the sentence lacks the emphasis I want. And writing is all about emphasis.

Can You Change a Contract?

Your chance of making a profit from a book or article hedges on the contract you sign for it. Contracts can be as short as a page or as long as 30 pages. Some publishers call them agreements, but they’re contracts, nonetheless. It pays to read them carefully because whatever is included in them is binding for both parties.

Publishers have revised their contracts since the Internet came into prominent use to garner every business advantage. In today’s market, that means electronic sales, among other things. Publishing to their Web sites or publishing your work as an ebook are options they never had before. And with the success of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s ebook reader, those options have stepped right out front. This applies both to books and article, but not as much to short stories.

Signing a contract put you into a legal binding agreement . However, it also binds the publisher into the same agreement. Once, a magazine I wrote for sent me contracts for every article. In it was a line about electronic rights. I changed the wording to say I wouldn’t sell them or sometimes, I said I’d sell them for 10-15 percent of the article fee. His editor agreed. The publisher ignored the changes and published them on his Web site anyway. After two years and many articles later, I called him on it, and his lawyer said he basically didn’t have a leg to stand on because he had ignored the original contract changes. The publisher ended up paying me over $400 in back fees.

Another time, a client, who had hired me to write an extensive four-page advertorial for a big-city paper, ignored the phrase in it which said he had only one full edit of the manuscript. This was to prevent him from changing his mind lots of times before publication–a habit of business executives. In the end, he had to pay me 100 percent more because each additional edit cost him $1.00 per word. Again, his lawyer said he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

You can change any of the wording in a contract before you sign it–as long as the publisher agrees. A publisher usually begins with a standard legal contract, then adds whatever details he or she needs for the individual project. A standard contract gives all the monetary and legal advantages to the party who draws it up. In the above examples, these were the magazine publisher and myself. You, as the writer, have the right to change anything in the contract, should you not find it in your best interest.

If this is your first contract with a particular publisher, you don’t have the bargaining power to change much. But as you continue working on projects for that same publisher, your bargaining power increases.

And it isn’t just about your advance, should you be writing a book. Other items that you can change include deadline dates, reversion of rights back to you after publication (used mostly for articles), electronic rights (Web site and ebooks), royalty percentages, subsidiary rights (T.V., film, worldwide rights), and more.

So the next time you receive a contract from a publisher, read it very carefully. In fact, make a copy and underline or highlight sections on the copy that you find questionable. Don’t hesitate to ask for changes. Remember, it’s in your best interest. The publisher already has theirs covered.