The Art of Freelancing

I would bet that most folks who end up being freelance writers didn’t while away the hours during grade school dreaming of writing web content for clients half way across the world. Yes, I believe some people did know that they wanted to write when they grew up. Maybe they had visions of entertaining the world with the stories they knew were stashed inside their head. For quite a few of the rest of us, freelance writing kind of ended up in our laps and we decided to give it a home and nourish it.

Regardless of how we arrived, the point is that we are here and we are home. And since we are home, maybe we should take a little closer look at what we are doing.

To an outsider – and sometimes, even to ourselves – freelancing looks mechanical. We open a shop and hang our shingle out for the world to see. We hope the world sees it and comes on in to have a look around. We want even more for some of the world to turn into clients. A very mechanical process of offering a service and others deciding that they need our services.

At first blush, this would seem to be business as usual: business. I think that there is so much more to what we do and it is out of the realm of the rigid and mechanical. I think that a good freelance writer is practicing a form of art.  Yes, some of the processes that we go through to gain clients are less art and more mundane, but where the magic happens, where our words come together is nothing short of artistry.

When we write for a client, we are creating. Creation is art. No matter the subject or kind of writing, as a freelance writer we create – we bring forth something from nothing. Even a keyword rich 500 word post on mortgage points in an economic downturn is art.

If we have done our jobs well and have created something that comes from the heart of passionate writing, then we have succeeded in the art of freelancing. Uninspired, rote writings are hardly art. Much like a 2 dollar postcard with a picture of art, it resembles but does not inspire someone to go out and buy a frame.

If you desire to be an artist of freelance writing, you need to write from the heart. You need to put passion and desire into every project. If you don’t then you may still have a piece that a client will pay you for, but you will not have a masterpiece that the client will want to pay for AND tell everyone they know about this great writing artist they’ve discovered.

I know that a lot of times it doesn’t feel like you’re creating art. You need to get past that feeling and have respect for the work that you do. Once you have respect for the work that you are doing, you will see that in fact, you have acquired the art of freelancing.

Posted by: George