Can Anyone Be A Freelance Writer?

By Dan Smith

When I sat down to think about this, my first post for Get Paid To Write Online, I was trying to think of a topic that all writers could relate to. A topic that everyone reading it could have an opinion on.

I sat for a while, pondering exactly what to write about. I flicked through a few of the blogs I read regularly for inspiration, but nothing seemed to jump out.

Then it dawned on me that this was one of only a handful of times when I was stuck for what to write.

I was then hit by the thought of does this happen to every writer? Or is it just me? Surely it doesn’t happen to those who’ve been doing it years upon years?

As I’ve found so many of my thoughts and ideas do, this one began to snowball and I started to question whether I was actually qualified to be a freelance writer.

I’ve always enjoyed writing since I can remember. I had some pieces published a few times when I was still in school and then when I began work, wherever I was I was put in charge of the newsletter, leaflets or press releases within a matter of weeks, irrelevant of what my official title was (I remember once my title was something along the lines of “Administrator’s Assistant”, when in truth it should have been “Chief Press Officer-cum-IT-Consultant”).

I was good at English when I was at school and read more books than most people of school age read. I even took a really keen interest in music — partly for the music itself and partly because I enjoyed learning the lyrics and understanding how they linked together.

But as much as I might have enjoyed writing and reading for years and people seemed to have both enjoyed and respected my work — even down to a basic news article — the question was still there.

How qualified does that make me as a freelance writer?

And then it slapped me in the face — it doesn’t.

To me, being a writer is being able to get your message across to people. It’s about being able to engage with the reader and deliver the point of the piece of writing to them in a clear and concise way.

I’m fully behind traditional education and I have no doubts that if you have a degree in, for example, English language, you’ll be able to write some wonderful pieces. But if you haven’t got that lust for writing, I honestly think it would be difficult to carve out a career as a respectable freelance writer.

But then again I could be completely off the mark — can anyone be a freelance writer?