Freelance writing: Five vital skills and how to learn them
Freelancing requires a lot of hard work, but knowing these skills can put you ahead.
Freelance writing is so much more than it sounds. You have to be a writer, an editor, a lawyer, a negotiator, a fitness coach, a salesperson, a marketer, a house cleaner, a personal assistant, a financial consultant, and an artist — and still find time to do everything else you want to do.
My first year of freelancing was about figuring out how to make it work for me, how to deal with my mental health issues and still get things done. It was about learning how to not fail and find a way to create some sort of stability in my work.
No one taught me how to do all of the things I needed to do to be a successful freelance writer.
Not my journalism professors, not the internet, no one. I had to cobble together bits of information, experiment with it and cast the unhelpful bits aside to get it right.
I wanted a shortcut, but I couldn’t find one I could rely on. So I struggled for a long time. But I’m finally at a place that feels good — suspiciously good. Maybe it’s just the service-journalism background in me or my inherent desire to not ever make…
