Do you need to have some writing experience before you start your freelance writing career? The answer is yes and no. Yes because you cannot get any client – at least not the serious ones – if you do not have any prior experience, and no because you cannot have experience without getting to work for some clients. It indeed is a hen and an egg problem, but there is a way out of this situation.
How to gain writing experience before even getting a client
Do you really think you do not have any writing experience? You are wrong in thinking so; what about your term papers and assignments that you submitted in your school and college? Yes, those were writings as well – though not professional, may be not even grammatically correct, nevertheless they gave you some experience.
But, when starting as a freelance writer we are not concerned about just any writing. We are, in fact, concerned about proper experience, which one can get only when one writes professionally, which brings us to the original question of how to get writing experience as professional without having any client. The following points will help you answer that.
- Start your own blog and post articles on it. Make sure each article is at least 500 words long.
- Write articles for social communities and motivate your friends to read and give feedback to you. This will be a valuable asset which you can use to show your clients to get work.
- Write articles for free. This will help you build portfolio — this may be an option, but I will not suggest putting this into effect unless you have exhausted all the available options.
- Write for charity website. They like contributors.
There are many ways to build your portfolio and have some writing experience. The question is are you will to find an avenue and pursue it to the end?
Tags: blog, Charity Website, Egg Problem, Feedback, Freelance Writer, Freelance Writing Career, Friends, Portfolio, Proper Experience, Social Communities, Term papers
If you are starting out as a freelance writer then there must be many things bugging you, or is there anything about freelance writing that can possibly bug you?
These questions are the two aspects of the same story, but with different protagonists: do you know what it takes to be successful as a freelance writer? This blog-post and the coming ones will provide you with a list of things that you must accomplish before venturing out for freelance writing.
I have organized this list of items to verify before jumping on the freelancing bandwagon based on the closeness of the topic to a freelance writing fresher. We (You and I) will begin this journey with you and your attitude towards writing, then will move ahead to see how the market is and what all you need to know before you commit. So, let’s get going.
Have you rounded of your writing skills?
Writing for someone else for money or without money is entirely different from writing for yourself or your term papers. The former requires precision in writing techniques, which may or may not require in getting the latter job done. I do not doubt your writing skill. I just want to say is go and brush up your grammar and writing skills to prepare yourself for better gigs.
What type of writer you are?
This is the second basic question you need to ask yourself. Are you a fiction writer or a non-fiction writer? If fiction is your genre, do you write stories, or poems? If you are a story writer, do you write short story, very short story, novella, or novel? What kind of story on that: crime, detective, erotic, historical, psychological, etc.? If you are a non-fiction writer, what kind of non-fiction you write? Do you write articles, press releases, sales letters, blogs, website content, political essays, term papers, magazine articles, news stories, or what?
As you can see this is a huge question, and you must have guessed, you will require a soul searching to know which genre fits your type. Not everyone is a “writing Leonardo “who can write on anything and everything with equal gusto, and produce equally mesmerizing output. Some people can do that, and rest of us can just hope to.
Where is your portfolio?
If you thought only a designer (graphic, fashion, web, hair, or any kind), a model, or a photographer, etc., needs a portfolio then it’s time for me to break the news: “A freelance writer also needs a portfolio!”
Build a portfolio that consists of writing samples from all the genres you want to get work in. yes, you can write in more than one genre!
Give me your URL?
C’mon, don’t say, you don’t know what a URL is!
Just joking.
When you are starting out, you many not feel the need to have a website, but once you move up the ladder, you will feel the need for one, and then you might think, “Why I didn’t have it yet?”
You are going to need it eventually, then why not now?
Tags: Bandwagon, Closeness, Detective, Fiction Writer, Freelance Writer, Freelance Writing, Grammar, Latter Job, Leonardo, Magazine Articles, Many Things, Non Fiction, Novella, Political Essays, Protagonists, Sales Letters, Short Story, Story Writer, Term papers, Writing Skill, Writing Skills, Writing Techniques
Google officially announced the world’s first task array system with artificial intelligence on March 31st, 2009! It was named CADIE, which stands for Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, and in only one day “she” has already improved her language skills and is now offering Google Chrome with 3D! CADIE has placed herself into (and also modified) Google Maps. She has started her own YouTube Channel too! She’s changing everything in Google and she can even help you finish term papers and fix your spreadsheets too. For all of the programmers out there, she can even write code! But I must warn you that she is pretty adamant about using INTERCAL; she doesn’t want to know anything about Python or Java at all!
At first glance, CADIE and Gmail’s Autopilot Email program seem unbelievable! Gmail says that you don’t have to spend all your time reading messages because Gmail’s Autopilot will do all the work for you by matching your writing style. If two Gmail accounts use the autopilot program then they can “converse with each other for up to three messages each.” Before you continue reading this post, go check it out for yourself now by opening a new window and visiting Google’s Gmail. Also check out the CADIE page to befriend the artificially intelligent being yourself.
I checked out the CADIE blogspot homepage, which seems like a cheap mock-up from the past with all of its flashy scrolling banners, and I asked myself, “Why a panda?” The music is nice, but why does it say this at the top of the page:
All your personal World Wide Website belong to CADIE
Did Google get hacked? It can’t possibly be! I scrolled back to the Google page and effectively, there was the announcement for Gmail autopilot! Google is either way ahead of the IT game or has poor security! What do you think? Or did Google get hijacked by a supercomputer it created? Maybe we shouldn’t be questioning CADIE or Google! Okay, okay, the truth (which dawned on me after a little while) is that Google has played one of the biggest April Fools jokes on the internet! I didn’t want to spoil the joke by posting on it, so I tried to just pass the information on… Were you fooled? Would you want artificial intelligence to do the things Google said she could? Is email with artificial intelligence just too much for now? Leave a comment with your opinion…
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Autopilot, Cadie, Email, Email Program, First Glance, Gmail, Google, Intelligence, Language Skills, Maps, March 31st, Panda, Poor Security, Programmers, Python, Reading Messages, Scrolling Banners, Spreadsheets, Supercomputer, Term papers, Writing Style
