It’s been a long old day.  Now, that may partly be down to the hangover I earned at last night’s pancake party.  OK, it may in large part be due to that.  But it’s also down to a very long day staring at my computer screen.

I’ve been busy on a couple of things today.  The first is another oDesk assignment, this time to restructure and rewrite a web site for someone as well as, almost certainly, revising and updating their eBook.  That’s been a fun one, because writing for eBooks is like travelling to another planet if you’re used to more traditional principles of writing, and the web sites that promote them are equally alien to someone who’s been more used, in the past, to sorting out gorgeous sites for big blue-chips and small arts facilities.

My inner red pen has had to be quite seriously suppressed throughout this process.  All I’ve allowed it to do so far is pick up spelling and grammar errors and factual inaccuracies.  And it’ll have to make do with that for the time being, because I am preparing to write some of the most cringe-worthy copy I will ever have seen.  

And yet, joking and snobbishness aside, this is copy that apparently works and sells an awful lot of eBooks.  The thought is frankly terrifying to anyone who has ever striven to write good, readable copy that is easy on the eye and communicates clearly, effectively and with a minimum of fuss… and absolutely no badgering, hectoring or gratuitous repetition of spurious ‘facts’ to get the message across.  And I’m quite concerned that there are people out there who will fall for that kind of copy.

But while it’s easy for me to look down my nose at this kind of thing, I took the job on because I was curious and this gave me a chance to have a look at this world from the inside out.  My finely-honed literary mind has been bent not on great novels but on the reasons behind the use of language, the repetition, the presentation of arguments and - believe it or not - HTML elements to create a text that not only sells but gains high page ranks in Google.  Notwithstanding the fact that the site is written in appalling non-native English at the moment, there is a clear logic behind the content and structure and it’s been as much fun analysing that as I used to have in uni days analysing Balzac: it’s trashy, but there’s a native wit you’ve got to admire.

The other project I’ve been working on is rather closer to home.  We’re about to launch a new web site for the Rag Factory, so I’ve been grinding away at the copy for that and loading it into the new CMS.  I will admit to being utterly smitten with the CMS, which is Concrete5.  It really is one of the best examples of what good programming can achieve in terms of user-friendliness and the ability to simplify tasks that lesser content management systems make hideously complex.

So while it’s been exhausting, it has probably, overall, been a good day, so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and say goodnight.