Pam Leven Presents Words Will Fly

I appreciate the details in each writing assignment.
If you examine the fine points of any project, you’ll discover either God or the Devil. I explore for both. With the deity in mind, I look for opportunities to illuminate readers to the imagination and resourcefulness that my clients bring to their work. I uncover values and benefits because, like the English writer Gilbert K. Chesterton, I believe “there is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject.” With the devil hovering, I examine my copy for inconsistencies and errors before anyone else might find them.

I never charge clients for my hedonistic editorial pleasures.
No precise mathematical formula exists for the time required to research and write something versus the time required to read it. That’s probably good news because any Research + Writing / Reading ratio would be exceedingly top-heavy and utterly devastating to the writer. Consider movies, novels, investigative reporting stories and crossword puzzles. Still, self-indulgent writers delight in spit-polishing paragraphs, sentences and phrases. Over and over. Until they shine. I confess: I’m doing it right now.

I cheerfully accept client suggestions.
I believe in the correctness of this editorial credo: The strongest drive is not for money or sex; it is one person’s need to change another’s copy. I never incorporate my ego into work that is not under my own byline and I always invite clients to rewrite my copy to (and with) their hearts’ content. I will, however, put up a spirited defense of my own words if I really think they’re best, and I will make sure that facts are accurate, spelling and grammar are correct and wording is clear. Generally speaking, two heads and possibly three are better than one, but more is definitely not.
I believe that verbs are verbs and nouns are nouns.
I use real verbs as verbs and I don’t verbify nouns—except to make that point. I also eat lunch, make lunch and go to lunch, but I don’t do lunch. I avoid using that catch-all verb when a more descriptive and dynamic verb will…work better.
I put punctuation in proper places.
English grammar has 14 punctuation marks: apostrophe, braces, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipses, exclamation point, hyphen, parenthesis, period, question mark, quotation marks, semicolon. I know where to put them, even if they do look odd. And when they look odd to me, I’ll consult my handy style guides or other references.
And I make the right choice between confusing word pairs.
Word pairs can be perplexing. I know the difference between farther and further (The first-named refers to physical distance, the second to metaphysical distance.), continual and continuous (The first lasts with pauses; the second has none.), nauseous and nauseated (The first causes nausea; the second causes the feeling of nausea. If you say you are nauseous, you will make me feel nauseated.), and former and latter (which I often rename with numbers to avoid using the terms).
I know that a happy client is a happy client.
Writing wonderful things about yourself can be painful and difficult. That’s one of many reasons I’ve found that people hire me to write for them. I also know that people like being surprised by unexpected insights into their talents and characters that emerge from our conversational interviews. I try to make client meetings short and, if possible, fun. I keep my rates fair. My goal at the end of a job is for everyone involved to go away pleased—and then for us to all come together again.