Creative Copywriting and Technical Documentation
Here’s a great report on the current state of freelancing (welcome to my world!) in this big crazy world of work.
In a recession, this kind of data is like a gold mine for those of us looking for new projects and clients.
http://www.freeagentcentral.com/freelancer-report-2009
As I work on several sell sheets at a time for my customers, several issues keep popping up over and over and just seem to be part of the creative process:
There is typically a Creative Director-type person (even if they are not identified as such with the title, etc.) and a Product Manager-type (again, regardless of title). These are the two main drivers of the sell sheet, and as a Copy Writer, the people I spend the vast majority of my time working with.
Sell sheets are really satisfying for me to develop for some reason. I love the whole process: taking a product idea and communicating all the features and value to a specific audience. There’s alot to think about, an approach to develop and run with, and endless (sometimes!) revision cycle that makes the copy better and better as time goes on.
Once the sheet is finally laid out and printed, it’s very satisfying to hold it in your hand and look it over, even if by that point you might hate the product or service just a little bit.
I get asked to write white papers for software and hardware solutions all the time. I’ve written papers for RFID networking devices, massively parrallel-processing data warehouse solutions, interactive websites, Enterprise systems, and Web 2.0 applications.
White papers are different than marketing communications. White papers have a technical core, typically including statistics and some thorny math problem that must be explained in laymen terms and solved, but not so solved that someone from a competing company can read through the paper and finally realize what they’re missing in their own solution 
.