Services

Writing, Rewriting and Collaborative Writing

If you don’t have the time or the patience to write the document you need, our freelance writers can turn a mass of notes into a well-organized document. You generate the ideas and provide the background information; we write the finished product.

If you have a rough draft, we can rewrite it into a professional book, report or brochure that will clearly express your intent to your readers.

If you have the thoughts and resources but aren’t comfortable sitting down to write, we can do the writing with you. While you tell us your thoughts, we will write the material, and then together we will massage it into the message you want to present. (Note that collaborative writing is most effective with relatively short projects, like websites, brochures and booklets.)

Manuscript Evaluation

You’ve written a book and sent it off to a number of publishers, but you receive only generic rejection letters. Or you’ve finished your book but have no idea whether it is readable or publishable. Maybe you want to self-publish your book and you want it to be as professional and marketable as possible.

A manuscript assessment will provide you with information you can use to make changes and decisions about your next steps. The evaluation will look at your content for structure, tone, setting, believability and other factors. It will also assess your writing and the marketability of your project. Finally, the manuscript evaluator will tell you about special strengths and specific challenges, and suggest what your next steps might be. 

Writing Training

Based on over 20 years of editing financial research and a survey of users of financial research reports, Sheila Mahoney has developed a writing training program specifically for financial analysts. Among other things, Sheila’s program teaches what to include on your cover page and how to write headlines that will draw the attention of your clients; how to write an effective summary and when to write it; in what order to present your information for various types of reports; and how to make your report easy for your clients to read.

Mahoney Associates also provides courses in Plain Language and Writing for the Web.

Plain language writing provides clear and concise information that is well organized, and free of jargon, awkward grammar and unnecessarily technical terms. It recognizes who your target audience is and makes your material readable by that group. Plain language is becoming increasingly important to government, businesses and organizations, particularly in communicating important information that needs to be easily understood by a broad audience.

Writing for the web can be tricky. Depending on the goals of your website or blog, your style of writing and presentation will change. If your audience is seeking information and is likely doing research for a broad understanding of a specific topic (say a particular illness), your site can be relatively text heavy as long as it is easy to navigate. If, on the other hand, you are selling a product or service, your site needs to clearly express why customers should buy from you (instead of your competitors) and should guide them to a final sale.

Sheila has helped me write much of my website content, newsletter articles, newspaper articles and difficult business letters.

Because of her brilliant work, I have been able to market myself well and my material is consistent, easy to read and the message is clear. Thank you Sheila.

Dr. Kerri Fullerton
Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine