A Yes Attitude – 10 Unique Projects Tackled by TWFH

A YES ATTITUDE – 10 UNIQUE PROJECTS TACKLED BY TWFH

Sometimes, finding vendors and business partners to take on unique projects for your company is challenging. This problem can be especially true if you’re looking for a writing agency.

It’s always nice to be told yes, but unfortunately, that word is hard to come by these days—even with contractors wanting your business.

However, at The Writers For Hire, we’re just the opposite. We thrive on challenging projects, and our people often have trouble saying no to difficult assignments. But that’s just who we are.

To illustrate this fact, here are 10 examples of the yes attitude in action. Read all of them to get inspiration and encourage your employees and vendors to think outside the box.

1. Valentine’s Day Poetry at the Mall

Imagine strolling up to a department store cosmetics counter at your local mall only to find a handsome, rugged guy with a beard and mustache offering to write poetry for you. 

Well, that's precisely what happened one Valentine's Day at a mall in Houston, Texas.

Our very own Stacy Clifford was commissioned to write personalized notes for the store's customers who bought gifts for their loved ones.

The store’s idea was to offer something extra for their customers to help differentiate themselves from other Valentine's Day retailers. The problem was that the company they initially hired to write the poetry canceled the day before the event.

That's where Stacy came in.

The store manager called The Writers For Hire in a raging panic the same day, asking if we had any writers who could do poetry.

Thankfully, Stacy was available to save the day. He showed up to the mall in his best Valentine’s Day garb and offered up some of the most romantic poetry he could think of spontaneously.

He first asked the customer about their relationship with their loved one. Then, he would craft a poem that was special to them. Take a look:

A painting starts with a single shade

As colors build, a world is made

I color you, you color me. In a painting no one else can see

With each day we add a stroke to the world we have awoke

And as our picture comes to light we’ll see our love grow bold and bright

Now, if that doesn’t make you want to cry, nothing will. The experience must have affected Stacy, as well; he got married two weeks later! 

Stacy is still with us and writes everything from poetry gift books to historical fiction and creative journalism.  

2. Medical Marijuana Farm Project

At The Writers For Hire, our main focus is on utilizing the unique experiences of our writers, editors, and project managers. Many of us have specialized knowledge in various disciplines; however, medical marijuana farming was not one of them.

When we were called on to provide standard operating procedures for a legal marijuana grower, many of us were hesitant.

We can't honestly say the folks at The Writers For Hire have never had the opportunity to partake. It's just that none of us at the time had any occasion to use marijuana for medical purposes. And we definitely had never farmed the stuff!

While the ins and outs of medical marijuana farming was a bit out of our wheelhouse, we were up for the challenge and happy to learn something new. We made use of our client’s wonderful subject matter experts and completed the job on time and to our customer’s great satisfaction. 

3. Native American Oral History Book

Most of the history of Native American tribes is a result of oral traditions passed down through the generations.

The issue is that those oral traditions frequently result in gaps in their written history.

For one fascinating project, The Writers For Hire was tasked to chronicle the historical past of a small tribe in east central Minnesota.

By documenting the history of family members within the tribe, older members could preserve their legacy. Otherwise, they would eventually pass on without ancestral knowledge given to the next generation.

Our writers traveled to the tribe's location and were assigned an elder to interview. Each had an amazing life story; while some were eager to tell it, others were undoubtedly shy.

Ultimately, our team was enriched by having a chance to experience such a unique culture.

4. Educational Computer Game

Writing for children is a dream job for many of our writers.

We love connecting with kids and will jump at the opportunity to create educational literature for them.

One such project we were fortunate to work on was writing for a toy manufacturer that made stuffed animals.

The product came with a code the child could use to enter an online virtual world. 

Once in, they were invited to complete online educational activities. Our job was to write the content for the online quizzes. 

We completed the task by pouring over several textbooks on various subjects, including math, history, and literature. When we finished, we had over 2,000 questions and answers. We also wrote much of their in-game messaging to enhance the user experience.

5. Unique Genealogy and Family Tree Projects

Jennifer Rizzo is our genealogy expert at The Writers For Hire. She has taken on several projects for clients needing everything from family history research to lengthy ancestral autobiographies and memoir books.

Her favorite is when she gets to travel to foreign countries to find nuggets of information she can't uncover locally.

On one occasion, Jennifer traveled on behalf of the client to the United Kingdom. She uncovered the family's history on the father's side dating back to the 1500s.

The client was so impressed, they sent her off to Germany to research the mother’s side of the family, as well.

What started as a simple family tree morphed into a striking visual poster including all pertinent historical timelines for each side of the family. It is truly like nothing else you could find online.

6. Gifts for Your Favorite Writer

Shelley Harrison Carpenter is one of the more creative minds at The Writers for Hire. She was recently assigned to write a blog post about holiday gifts for writers.

Some of the stuff she came up with was unusual and funny. For example, she offered up a suggestion for door hangers warning people not to enter. The message is clear:

“Caution, Writer at Work. Interrupt at Your Own Risk.”

Indeed, writers don’t want to be disturbed when they’re hard at work. But thankfully, most of us don’t have a license to carry firearms.

7. WWI Fictional Narrative

Another project Stacy and Jennifer teamed up on for us was a historical fiction book based on the relative of a client we worked for in the past.

What originally started as a genealogy project quickly evolved after the client learned more about his great-grandfather, who served in a little-known army regiment during WWI.

The client eventually had Stacy and Jennifer do more in-depth historical research and write a fictional story based on his great-grandfather's real-life events during the war.

When our writers discovered a regimental newspaper with enough information to piece together a personal story, it developed into an amazing work of historical fiction that the client had published for his family to enjoy.

8. Unique Recruitment Campaigns

If you were to poll 1,000 recent college graduates and ask them what career path they were taking, few would say insurance actuary.

That's the problem one of our clients had a few years back. They were a large insurance actuarial firm that faced an enormous recruitment challenge. 

We teamed up with their marketing staff to organize focus groups.

Armed with the newly revised recruitment themes, we traveled to four major college campuses across the United States and Canada.

We aimed to see which materials resonated the most with college kids.

We collected information using various methods, including verbal feedback and written surveys. When we finished collecting the data, we wrote a detailed report, and our client chose the winning campaign. 

9. Writing for Robots

For this project, we had to write a request for proposal (RFP) response for a company that made chatbots.

Our client had to show their technical expertise and experience designing software for conducting automated conversations with people online.

To complete the RFP response, our writers had to understand the technical features of what the company was offering and explain it in a way that the people requesting the response would understand.

Thankfully, The Writers For Hire had a teamwork paradigm from its start. We combined the experience of writers, editors, and project managers to conduct the necessary research and deliver the response on time.

We sent the proposal without a hitch, and the chatbot company thrives today. Although it presented a technical challenge, we delivered the project promptly and with the requested information.

Who knows, maybe The Writers For Hire will be called on to write for a colony of robots living on Mars someday.

10. The 50-Year-Old Crime Story

Sometimes, we have an opportunity to set the record straight.

For example, a major crime happened many years ago, and one of the heroes who saved lives that day didn't get credit for it. Luckily, The Writers For Hire had the privilege to tell the hero’s side of the story.

Somewhere, someone is accused of something they didn’t do. Who’s going to tell the world about what happened from their perspective?

You may want us to tell your story.

We won’t shy away from challenging projects at The Writers For Hire. Unlike most writing agencies, we’re willing to go where our research takes us and do the work others wouldn’t dare attempt.