Freelance Writing

Why should you critique your own writing?

Writing gives a two dimensional structure a three dimensional look. It creates visuals in the mind of your readers. It gives some form to a non-existent structure. Once put down in print, you have actually captured and contained it. Your idea has been made presentable. The more you do it, the more you are able to do it and it thus becomes easier for you to churn out writings and express yourself through words. Use words that you have learned in your mind to express your ideas. You really don’t have to wait until you learn the perfect words. The words that you have right now are enough; one can always refine everything later.

You should allow your writing to be free flowing. You should not stop yourself from putting whatever you are thinking into writing. Just write down whatever thoughts come into your mind about the subject. Make notes. Jot down all your ideas and phrases as they occur to you, and as an open minded writer, you should always keep a pad where you can write down notes where ever you go. It’s much easier to build upon existing material than it is to create it from nothing. Editing can always be done and refined later. You will generally find that you have an abundance of things to write about when you plan things this way.
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Generating Interesting Articles and Titles – Part Two

Delving into parts we should not have to reach….colon cleansing made “interesting”

My previous post provided some generic formulae widely used for generating articles and titles that readers are attracted to. As a professional writer, you are not always in a position to pick and choose your assignments and you may be faced with producing content on the most unsavoury of topics. In this instance, I recently had to deal with an assignment on colon cleansing, and though the memory still haunts me, the writing show must nevertheless go on.

Previously, I dealt with “How to..” Lists and quoted a “Study” as a way of generating titles and articles. I will finish this off here, with three more general formula techniques.

Mistakes That Ruin Your Writing Credibility

picture of an erazer

The following are the most common mistakes that people make when writing for fiction, a manuscript or looking to promote a book title.

Poor grammar, spelling, typos and usage

One of the basic aspects of writing is being grammatically correct, without making silly spelling mistakes. The single most common error that people make is the usage of the passive voice. In passive voice, nothing is ever anyone’s fault, because people do not do things. Things happen to people. “Bobby ate the pizza” is active. “The pizza was eaten” is passive. Note that the action of food and the food is more important than the character in the passive voice. When writers are unsure of themselves they often drop into the passive voice. Along with this, people often make mistakes in the usage of tenses. Immature writers will begin stories in whatever tense they want, and not maintain logic in their use of tenses.

Generating Interesting Articles and Titles – Part One

Colon Cleansing is not a pleasant subject but……..

As a writer for hire, you may have some choice over your subject matter, but realistically you’ll take any work that pays what you are looking for. It’s a stark choice between paying the bills or not and like someone said, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and of the two, being rich is better!”

So you have an assignment to deliver articles on a mundane or less than interesting subject and now you have to come up with content that will attract readers and promote your client’s objectives for creating the project. This is where you can start employing some generic approaches for developing articles that can be adapted for pretty much any subject. Looking through these examples, you will probably start recognising the general formulae for many of the articles and content that you come across on the web.

Here’s our subject then – colon cleansing – this is a real project I worked on recently and frankly, it’s a pretty disgusting and distasteful topic, which I knew almost absolutely nothing about when I was given the assignment. Now, how do we go about generating article ideas for flushing out your insides?

Article Templates – How To Write An Article

Learn How to Write an Article

Now this may seem like teaching granny to suck eggs; however, I assure you it is not. Assignments frequently arrive for articles to be delivered in batches usually following a related or common theme. They may need to be twisted slightly to accommodate different keywords and phrases for SEO purposes or indeed to generate interest for the sake of pure marketing and promotion.

Ask yourself how you would handle twenty 500 word articles on male pattern baldness and your deadline is 24 hours from now?

Using a template will help you focus on delivering the content in a structured fashion that keeps you on topic without meandering through hours of fruitless research or preparation. You do not need to be a slave to a template but I use them frequently and alter them as seems fit depending on the project I’m working on. Below is a template I use and have saved as a Word document and reach for it whenever I am starting a new batch of articles.

There may be cries of “foul” from some of you, but my time is my money and the same applies to anyone seriously looking to earn a living writing.

Writing: A Career Scope

Writing as a career has no boundaries. An affinity for writing is something those who wish to begin their career as a writer should have. Other necessary traits include the ability to express ideas clearly in writing, self motivation, creativity and curiosity to know more and write more.

To begin with, editors and authors are generally first choice when it comes to choosing a career, but writers with a technical background can also specialize as a technical writer. A technical writer develops technical materials, such as equipment manuals or operating and maintenance instructions. Most technical writers work with engineers or other techie professionals on technical subject matters to prepare written interpretations for general readership.

A creative writer, a poet, a lyricist, a novelist and a screenwriter, create original work—such as prose, poems, plays and song lyrics; most of these are either for performance or for publication.

As a writer of non-fiction, you will have to put a lot of hard work into research of the specific topic that you have been given to write about. Information has to be gathered through the internet, newspapers, magazines and other print media, personal observation, interviews and most importantly the library.
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