Of course, by career investment we don’t mean any actual substantial financial input and/or actual investment of money. Here’s are a number of tips, which any freelance writer should be able to use in order to eventually become a high end writing professional.

Basically, therefore, this article should appeal mostly to the rookies in the freelance writing business – you might have the talent, but you don’t have the experience and some of the skills.

What we mean here by “investing” is a mental exercise. From my own experience, freelance writing requires a great deal of intellectual potential as well as substantial knowledge in your specific field. There are not a lot of options to enhance that, if you already have an education.

The best way to acquire information and knowledge is fairly obvious for most of us – books! Nowadays, however, too many people spend their time on the Internet. Yes, of course, a huge amount of updated, current, intriguing information is to be found online. To tell you the truth, I spend a lot of time on the Internet too. However, reading a really good book is a very different experience from online browsing.

Reading is essential for freelance writers – it helps to develop your imagination, since all of the actions, scenes, and voices described in the book are essentially happening in your head. Additionally, it helps to strengthen your vocabulary and grammar skills. Some rookie freelance writers make a huge mistake in relying purely on the Internet and available online sources.
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There is a wide variety of competencies a freelance writer requires for success. However, I would rank marketing as one of the most critical skills, right after facility with writing. Why?

It is simple – if you freelance, then, by definition, you don’t have a consistent and stable job. That is why marketing yourself is so important – it flushes more jobs out of the underbrush! We have addressed this topic before, but let’s have a quick refresher! Here are some techniques:

Samples: be ready to offer examples of your best work. If you have created exclusive content, sharing such material might raise issues of copyright infringement. To avoid this, we suggest that you craft a number of samples specifically to introduce your work to prospective customers.
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Hey, guys!

Just a reminder for you – our essay writing contest is still in progress!

But you only have a couple of days to submit your essay! Last day when the submissions are going to be accepted – March 7th!

The feedback from the contestants is massive: we’ve received hundreds of submissions and yours can be one of them!

The rules and requirements for the essay are pretty easy! Write a simple 200 word essay on one of the following topics:

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Applications abound to provide communication mobility for everyone who’s constantly on the go or who depends heavily on their smart phones. Of course, reviewing them all might be a total waste of time. Thus, I’ll suggest some applications that I, as well as some of my colleagues, found useful.

Here’s one to get you started – Opera Mini Browser, mobile edition. This is probably the best browser for mobile devices, because it offers a plethora of functions – its operates practically the same as your standard PC browser. It differs in that it’s compressed into a package for smart phones and ordinary cellular phones.

This next app will be useful for Android users – it’s called GDocs. It’s basically Google Docs with the following difference: The standard Google Docs app for mobile devices allows users to review the documents, but there are no editing options. With this app, you can actually edit the content of your Google Docs database.
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You’ll empathize with this: the deadline was closing for our next blog posting. Ominously, I couldn’t think of any earth-shaking topics. After all, if you look at our blog, you’ll see that I’ve already covered quite a few.

This moment, when you think you have temporarily run out of ideas, is a dangerous point in any creative process.

This is what is called creative block, and it is exactly what I was experiencing right before writing this article.

You see the article, so what helped me overcome the problem? Analysis! It sounds weird, but in order for me to write an article, I needed to analyze why couldn’t write an article. The analysis itself turned out to be the article! Some might call this an easy way out, but I hope that this article will actually help my readers.

OK, let’s consider step one: looking in the obvious places. “If you want to hide something, put it in plain view” – as said by that early practitioner of the mystery-writer’s craft, E.A. Poe. I was sitting here wondering, “Why can’t I come up with a topic?” Then I ask myself, “ Wait, could this be a topic?”. And that is how you eventually came to see this piece. Make sure, however, that you explore the topic from a point of view that will be interesting to your readers. I hope mine does the job
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