I’ve been working on finding work as a freelance writer doing copywriting, scriptwriting, ad copy… that kind of thing. I’m a beginner without a whole lot to my name in terms of a professional portfolio so I’ve been doing a lot of research on how to get that moving.
Upwork has been my main platform for this. I’ll search through the jobs and try to find the ones that have specific requests. The ones that have laid out the exact type of work they are looking for.
Sometimes they’ll have links to samples, sometimes they’ll have potential prompts.
What I do then is lay out what the specifics are and then work to type up a sample that fits those guidelines. It’ll take a couple of hours, but I find this easier than trying to come up with my own ideas for samples. That usually results in a lot of second guessing.
This way there is a sort of guiding light, and I can almost convince myself that I’ve been hired to do the work. It also makes it a little less personal, which can help me work quickly and with a sense of disconnection, which I think is entirely necessary in order to get things done.
I also found this link.
It’s a list of 91 potential service businesses.
I’ve used it as a jumping off point. I’ll scroll through, find a service that sparks something in my brain, come up with a fake company, and then write some advertisement, video, or article in reference to it.
It’s a nice list with some unique things on it.
What I’m finding right now in regards to portfolio creation is that more is gonna be better than less. My pieces are all fairly short, which I think is best for now, but I find that each one is a little better than the last, which is all you can ask for really.
I’m doing this because I’m reminded of the writers I admire who worked as journalists, copywriters, advertisers, and freelancers. Mark Twain, Hemingway, Sam Fuller… there are lots. Many of them express that this type of work, this fast paced writing with harsh, quick, cruel deadlines, made them much better writers.
They learned to write concisely and quickly.
Things I hope to learn too.