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With the explosion of the Internet and the corresponding increasing demand for information, the occupation of freelance writer has opened wider. Never before have there been so many different writing opportunities journalism, online blogging, magazine writing, book writing, technical writing, advertising and script writing all provide opportunities for freelancers to show their stuff.

Freelancers who work hard to sharpen their skills will find many opportunities to explore and use their creative writing and to develop well-rounded abilities. Unlike some of my colleagues who stress the importance of building credentials as a freelancer, I believe it is more basic to encourage new writers to devote time to learning their craft. But first realize this: You must have something to say and you must be patient enough to wait for people to hear it.

Before you can succeed at writing, you must write. You must have an area of interest, even if it only serves for the one article you plan. If you have an expertise in a particular area, it is even better. Increasingly today, freelancers must be able to convince editors and publishers that they know more about the subject they desire to write about than just about anyone else who is likely to write about it. The easiest way to prove this to an editor is to go through other articles on the same subject, and compare them to what you will write and tell why your idea is better.

The strongest advice I give is this: YOU must be fascinated by the subject yourself, if you are to have any chance at all of convincing others to read what you write about it. Since you are a new writer without that backlog of previously published clips, it is best to try topics with which you are most familiar. You need ingenuity. You need to have that feeling in your gut that you will write the story or article and that you will allow nothing to stop it from happening!

IT ALL STARTS WITH IDEAS
Ideas come many ways. They may arrive in your mind while idle at a traffic stop; or even while you are sleeping. There is a deluge of possibilities for your subjects but you cannot write all of them. After carefully evaluating your first or second idea for your article, you may learn there is no market for it or that someone else has covered the idea with even more depth than you planned.

You must listen to yourself and to the world around you, always remembering that your primary objective is to be a successful freelancer. Do not let other distractions of getting published,

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