Punch Your Freelance Writing

image from punchingbagstands.org

Right in the chops. Go for the knock-out. There are a lot of freelance writers in the ring. The only way to rise above everyone else is to deliver solid punches with your writing. Clients will notice. You will notice. Soon after, everyone will notice.

Punchy

• Get out your thesaurus. I’m assuming you keep one handy. If not, shame on you. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You may not realize it, but your writing is tired. You use the same words day-in and day-out. You are risking becoming an opprobrious, casconading windbag so commit to launching your own literary juggernaut today.
• Become opinionated. Quit riding the middle of the road and make a bold statement or two about something that is a burning passion for you. Disregard the little voice that tells you you’re going to piss people off. There is no virtue higher than being true to yourself. Please reference any of the posts by Mark Pepper on this site. Seriously.
• Write your best stuff, then go back and eliminate 10 – 15 percent of the words. Nothing takes the punch out of your writing quite as much as being a wordy, blathering, love-to-hear-myself-talk writer. Try this one. As hard as it is to do, I guarantee that all of your efforts will be worth the result.
• Mix up your writing. If you tend to use bullet lists, lose ‘em. If you never write bullet lists, make them your standard format. Try using headers. See if you can keep all of your sentences to under 15 words. Write an entire article in pig latin. Write your concluding paragraph first and work your way backward all the way to the intro. See what I’m getting at here? The surest way to liven up your writing is to jack yourself out of your easy-chair.
• Speed write an article or two. Have a topic in mind, set a timer for 15 minutes and type like a lunatic. Don’t worry about formatting or typos, just type. After 15 minutes you can bat clean up. This forces your mind to focus and can result in punchy writing that is lean and mean.
• Make your very first sentence a bold and powerful statement about the topic. Make that sentence so powerful, someone would be daft to not read the rest of the article. If you need a day to craft that sentence then so be it. Once you have it, you can work on building the foundation of all the supporting statements.

Punchy writing is not necessarily easy writing. Hell, if it was easy, anyone could do it, right? Go examine some of your recent writings and see if they would be able to deliver that knock-out punch. If not, consider some of these suggestions and put the article back in the ring.