Freelance The term first appeared in Sir Walter Scott’s historical romance Ivanhoe, used to describe a mercenary warrior in medieval times. A knight willing to use his lance in the cause of whomever was paying. Free to roam. In modern times, the term applies to anyone who makes a living without an official connection to any organization. It’s used as a noun-freelancer. And also as a verb-to freelance. In the writing world, freelance applies to any writer who doesn’t write as an official employee of a company, with regular hours and benefits that a job entails. Novelist and Screenwriters are freelancers.

The nature of freelancing means you are writing numerous articles, each one a new idea. Even if most of your work is related to one field, you will still be working on a variety of ideas within that given field. Articles go through numerous stages-conceiving, pitching, researching, structuring, writing, revising, and so on.

You need to be a competent writer. Fundamentally, you need to know how to:

Structure a piece Compose graceful sentences Engage and entertain with your writing style Conduct and incorporate research (a practice known as reporting) Practice the basics of grammer and spelling Meet word limits

UK style ~ Pitch Letter, would I target both an editor and a commissioning editor. In the States, we only use the title “commissioning editor” in book publishing. They advise the publishing house on which books to publish. UK would target commissioning editors because they commission writers to produce articles and features.

A column is a regular feature or series of articles on a topic of interest by a single writer, are fairly hard to pitch w/out a relationship w/the paper or magazine.

A great way to start a letter: It was a pleasure to meet you

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