Fast Article Writing For Freelancers
So you've decided to start your freelance writing career? Well that's great. You should know that you'll have to face two main obstacles though: finding jobs and completing enough of them in as short a space of time as possible in order to make a real profit from your efforts. There are many online job banks you can use to jumpstart your career but how can you speed up your writing? Here are a few tips:
1) Write new ideas down as fast as they come to you.
The biggest problem facing any writer is the dreaded writer's block. Often, you will be hired to write a block of articles based on a particular topic. You cannot guarantee that your buyer will provide you with a list of article titles or tell you exactly what to write each article on. That will be left up to you and you can face real issues if you cannot brainstorm.
Let's say that you've been hired to write ten articles on coffee and you have one day to complete the job. You may not have ten article ideas in your head when you start your first article. That's okay. As you write, you will get ideas and thoughts which may not be applicable to the article you're writing at the time, but are related. Write each of these ideas down on a separate piece of paper. By the time you're finished with the first article, you might already have titles for the remainder.
2) Set time limits and stick to them.
Everyone needs discipline in varying aspects of their lives, and writing is no exception. It's very easy to get distracted, whether you're working in an office or at home. One trick to overcome this is setting a fixed limit on the time that you will spend on each article, and moving on to the next as soon as that time is up. When you first start this, you may want to set a longer time, such as 30 minutes per article. As you begin to hone your skills, you can cut this down to as much as 10 minutes per article.
3) Include the use of lists in your articles.
One of the fastest ways to write an article is through the use of lists. If you can list your ideas or points, it's easy to go back and start fleshing them out. Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of articles online starting off with €Ten tips to€¦' or €The five best ways to€¦'? Not only are the titles catchy but the articles themselves appeal to readers who like to quickly skim through what they're reading.
4) Write about things you know.
Of course you'll want to go after as many jobs as possible, but if you're not technologically inclined would it really make sense taking on a job to write about web design software? This will entail a lot of research to make sure you know what you're talking about, and this is time that you could be spending actually writing. This is especially important if you're on a tight deadline. You will find that it's much easier to write articles on topics that you are familiar with.
Keep at it. Employ the techniques listed and try to write as many articles as you're comfortable with each day. In time you will see a dramatic increase in that number.