I love writing!

I'm writing a speech this week, and it's both immensely stressful and incredibly wonderful all at once.

Most communicators like me write speeches from time to time, but most communicators hate doing it, and/or are not very good at it. But not me. I LOVE writing speeches. And frankly, I'm pretty good at it. I wish I could write speeches all the time.

Why don't I give up the rest of my freelance work and concentrate on just speechwriting, you ask? Good question. A few years ago I thought I'd try that. I hung out my shingle as a speechwriter. I told all my contacts I was looking for speech work. I networked specifically for that end. I answered RFPs and RFIs and all those other acronyms looking for speech writing services. And I got some speech work, but not enough. The reality is, I live in a city without a lot of head offices and not a lot of government -- not a capital city of either a province/state or federal capital. And those are the places where speeches get written.

I guess if I'd wanted it badly enough, I'd have networked more and better and gotten into those places -- after all, I can write a speech from anywhere -- but after six months of trying, I decided that while I still love speech writing, it couldn't be the focus of my business.

Why do I love speeches? I think I've always had an inclination for the spoken word. I'm the girl who went on vacation to New York and came back with the accent. I'm the girl who can speak four languages but not write well in the other three at all. And of course, I do like writing. I love writing sometimes. With much of my other work, there are lots of details to deal with -- emails, media lists, calls, client discussions, etc. My day can tick by without feeling like I've really finished much of anything. But when I'm writing like this, I clear my day and concentrate on just writing. My brain clicks into creative gear, my fingers fly on the keyboard, and it feels almost luxurious to just be writing.

I only have four more days to finish a keynote speech, with a lot of weighty content, so this is a big job. But I'm really enjoying it.

I know, I know, this is something I'm passionate about so should pursue it more. Hey, how do you think I got this assignment in the first place?! ;-)