words by Williams
what can I do for you?
keyboardforhire
I’m Roy Williams, and I’m a writer - or more precisely, what I do most of the time is write - and I've done so over a more than 30-year career in journalism and subsequently in PR, marketing, and creative writing.
These days I'm a 'keyboard for hire', though I have a number of my own projects I'm keen to fulfil, too. That said, I’m available to offer my experience for you to use if you need words to help your business along.
Take a look below at some of the services I can offer. I'm always happy to help.
ghostwriting
When people want to say something and feel they may not have the time, the confidence or the right words to communicate what they want to say, they will employ the services of a ghostwriter to take on that responsibility for them.
They need to trust whoever it is that takes on their words, shapes and publishes them, to faithfully reproduce the meaning they were trying to convey while, maybe adding a little polish to the way the message is delivered.
Recently, for instance, that's seen me working very closely with Belgian linguist, entrepreneur and inventor, Michaël Brands, who speaks six languages, but who modestly feels a native English speaker would best frame his sometimes astonishing insights in that language.
Michael asked me to edit his book, Data Harmonization in the Key of C (or How to Tune Your Data), which came out at the end of 2019, early 2020, working from a series of interviews..
Writing programme notes and player interviews for football teams such as Aberdeen FC and Glasgow Rangers, or notes and columns for the Telford ice hockey legend that is Chuck Taylor, is also a form of ghostwriting.
Writing leader columns for the Shropshire Star and Express and Star newspapers, under editors Warren Wilson and Adrian Faber, is a kind of ghostwriting too.
But if you wanted a speech writing - for the boardroom or the wedding breakfast - I'm confident I can write to suit your tone of voice and to capture what you want to say in the way you want to say it, and that you're happy to claim as your own.
If you have a project in mind and think we could work together, please get in touch.
copywriting
Copywriting is news stories, feature articles, sporting match reports and the like. It's also providing the words for business websites, brochures and catalogues. It involves the examination, understanding and communication of messages in one form or another - hopefully with a certain style and personality.
I've been lucky enough to have been let loose in 'actual' newspapers with my own columns, but these days my copywriting tends to be data-based (of which more below), but I can turn my hand to most subjects given the right brief. I enjoy the research and creating the message in the required style.
I can write for robots, but I like to think at least some of what I write will be read by real people, believing as I do that even Artificial Intelligence depends first and foremost on humans.
If you're looking for a fast, accurate copywriter, contact me. Let's talk.
shropshirevineyards
Promoting the vineyards and winemakers of Shropshire is a passion project that I'm hoping can become something more.
Finding out that an Indian family from the unlikely environs of South Telford had created a vineyard not a mile from our then home between Telford and Shrewsbury was the catalyst for me to find out much more about the vineyard scene in Shropshire.
I already knew about the vineyard at Wroxeter, south east of Shrewsbury, from which the late David Millington became such a strong supporter and advisor for those who came after him. I was also aware of the Halfpenny Green vineyard between Wolverhampton and Stourbridge. I didn’t know that, as a county, Shropshire was in the top 15 wine producing areas of the UK, nor that there were, at that time, no fewer than 10 vineyards in the SY postcode alone. Now there are 11 - and those are just the commercial ones.
Latest cabernet on the rank is the Rowton Vineyard on the Welshpool Road out of Shrewsbury, planted by the Evans twins, Zoe and Melissa just a couple of years ago. They expect their first crop in 2022.
Find out more here...
workingpartners
People tend to work better with people they like and it's great if they like the people they work with. It builds much better relationships all round.
That could be in ghostwriting, copywriting or even building websites from scratch for people I prefer to call partners, like the charity, Medic Malawi, for Sue and David Clarke at Churncote Farm Shop and Butchery, for Sam Rogers at, Team First Support, and for Michelle Ede, who offers EMDR therapy in Telford and Shrewsbury.
I've worked with platforms such as WordPress, but I also work extensively with Weebly, while this site is built on a platform hosted by names.co and works pretty much like any other widget-based offering.
I'm not going to pretend I'm a genius webmaster, but I can turn around an attractive fully functioning website fairly quickly and I'm happy to sort out all the hosting arrangements etc.
If you need a no-fuss website sharpish. Contact me.
originalfiction
I'm currently working on a series of four short stories on the subject of 'That Day' based on events I've seen or experienced, some fleeting, some played out over time.
The stories are all surprising in their own way - and at least one of them comes into the 'you couldn't make it up' category. All of them, however, have a basis in real human drama - and they could happen to any family up and down this land or any other.
I have dabbled in the past and, lurking somewhere in the depths of the Leanpub e-book platform is my one published work so far, Eric The Stuntcat.
Having spent the last seven years reading to my nephew, and with two nieces and another nephew joining the fray, I'm working on a plan to update Eric in the style of a picture book.
To that end, I recommend the BBC's Maestro series of online courses, from which I am shamelessly picking the brain of national treasure Julia Donaldson.
Happy to talk to you more. Give me a shout.
aboutdata
Alongside the word 'Covid', one of the words appearing most often in the pandemic top 10 is 'data' - You know, the thing they followed, didn't follow, that was right and was wrong and everything in between.
Is 'data' itself is ever wrong? The way it's collected may not be optimal, and the analytics may be rubbish, the quality and the governance may be all over the place, but data is always only ever data.
And do you know what? We all speak the language of data every day. When all is said and done, data is about people, things, place and time.
It is about Who, What, Where, and When, and for someone who spent most of a working lifetime in journalism, all we're missing is How and Why, which in data terms, is context.
I do a little extra curricular ghostwriting, on the subject of data, too. Can't tell you anything about that for the moment, but one day...
In an ideal world I would be messing around big time in the world of data - and luckily I do have access to a brand new digital management solution to help me along, so if you have any data-enabled projects in the pipeline and need some words to accompany them, get in touch.
foodwriting
There's a fascination in cooking and in the realisation that a recipe is more than just a list of ingredients, it's the why and wherefore of a series of complex processes that somehow result in the most astonishing beans on toast, for instance...
I know we can't all do Michelin-star dining, but there's something to be said for small portions of perfection versus a ton of chips and half a poly tunnel of salad on a plate.
During the space between lockdowns we were extraordinarily lucky to be invited by friends to join them to experience the tasting menu at Aulis, the development kitchen for Simon Rogan's L'Enclume in Cartmel, Cumbria.
For us it was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime evening, watching up to 20 tasting dishes prepared in front of you in an exclusive chef's table setting.
I wouldn't claim to be a food critic by any means, but I have the words to describe the experience and I'd be more than happy to share.
travelwriting
'Press trips' used to be quite a feature of life on a regional evening newspaper, when travel companies worked out that hosting a journalist for a few days probably cost less than a full page ad in a local tabloid.
I was lucky enough to get on a few, including a memorable visit to Ontario, Canada, on one of those 'if this is Tuesday, it must be Niagara' flying visits. All the more remarkable, because at the time I was going through my 'fear of flying' phase.
Another memorable trip took us to the Ardeche in France via Eurostar, where a visit to a vineyard on the slopes of the Rhone Valley was one of the triggers for my particular fascination with viticulture.
It was where I also took my first balloon flight. "Look," I said to the pilot, "the farmer is waving to us." "Not really," he said. "He's telling me to **** off because we're scaring his cows."
These days, travel blogging is a thing. I'm more than open to that. I still take notes wherever I go. Old habits die hard.
Happy to help if you need an experienced take on travel writing.
