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How to Become a Freelance Writer – An Easy Guide

Writing is a profession which can earn you lots of money, or none at all, depending on how you approach it. Professional writers usually take some time to get to a certain level of pay which can afford a comfortable life, don’t mind the pun. Writers of novels are a different story, as their professional careers often don’t depend on the novel itself, but rather its reception and the audience. Some novels had only become great almost a century after their publication.

Freelance writers, on the other hand, may get there a bit easier. If you want to become a freelance writer, here are a couple of things you need to do.

Start Writing – Quality Over Quantity

You do need to put in the work if you want to become a writer, not to mention a good writer. Once you have written about one million words, you should get the gist of things. That might seem like a lot, but a common article has around 500 words. You’d just need to write around 2000 of those and you’d be well on your way to becoming a good typewriter, err, writer?

Quality is more important than quantity and here is why. Not every article is good or contains relevant information. You want your grammar to be on point, your spelling, as well as the content and message of your article. Writing 100000 words takes much less time and if done properly, would make you a much better writer than writing one million words in the same style and following the same format.

Pay Attention to the Basics – Grammar, Spelling and Content

While you might be good at manipulating words, spelling and grammar mistakes might turn off a lot of readers and make you seem like an amateur. On the other hand, having perfect grammar is meaningless if the content makes no sense. With that in mind, you should make sure that what you are writing is straight to the point, whilst also making it easy to read. Get all these things right and you should already be well on your way to becoming a better writer.

Listen to the Critics – You Are NOT Perfect, Nobody Is

No writer is a perfect writer, there is no such thing. Holding on to your own opinion and using it as a defensive tool is self-degrading, especially if critiques of your writings are spot on. You might have misspelled something or have fallen into the trap of using the same style in 20 articles. You might want to look or listen to various critiques of your writing, but do so rationally. Some people might just invest their own emotions into their criticism, making it everything but factual. Not all critiques are equal or should be taken seriously.

The secret to becoming a better writer is writing often, but writing high quality texts as opposed to just printing words. Listening to quality feedback is also important, but don’t take things to heart. Improving means accepting your faults and mistakes and working on them.