Vital Skills That Every Freelance Writer Should Have

Every freelancer should have certain skills if you are going to make enough money to survive. If you are just looking to supplement your work compensation, then you can practice awhile while you get really good at it, before you can start pushing yourself – and your clients – for more money.

1. Education

The first major skill a freelance writer needs to have is a high level of education in English. Without at least an undergraduate degree in English composition or English Rhetoric and Composition, you will not have the kinds of years built up submitting essay after essay to your instructor and receipt of their comments to help you to grow as a writer.

The education in English also gives you a background writing all the time, several essays a week for four years or more. Most English majors have essays due every other day if not every single day in college, and, as they work their way up to the doctorate level, as most of them do, they get practice writing longer and longer pieces, which teaches them how to span essay content over many many pages—sometimes a hundred or more. It takes a special skill to be able to take a topic most students can put into a four page essay and lengthen and stretch the content to fit 1000 pages or more, but your typical English major can do this easily.

2. Training in Writing

The other thing an English major graduate will have is years and years of training in the art of English grammar. See, freelance writing companies aren’t going to take the time to tell you you’ve made a comma fault, nor are they going to teach you comma usage—they just won’t pay you, and they will have grounds as you probably signed a statement saying that unless the essay was well written, they do not have to give you the originally agreed upon pay. This protects freelance writing services from getting submitted essays from writers who are obviously weak in the language or grammar in the essay.

3. Writing Long Projects

Another skill a free lance writer needs is a gift for writing articles, essays, blogs, and book length projects of research, literary theory, literary history, the history of the book, or any topic in the world. If you do not have at least a working knowledge of many things, you will spend lots of time doing research.