Articles by Holly Trantham

It’s hard to count how many assumptions there are about what it means to be a writer. Perhaps people assume you spend your days in starving-artist-mode, huddled over a keyboard, living off black coffee and chain-smoked cigarettes in tattered old T-shirts and tweed jackets, not paying much attention to the lives going on around you. Or maybe, when you say you’re a writer, people assume you’re an already-famous novelist. However, you’ve simply been published on the internet a few times.

As we’ve been over before, your portfolio is crucial to helping you get the freelance writing work you want—and deserve. But what good is a portfolio if no one sees it?

Think about it for a minute: can you count the number of publications you’ve pitched to over the course of your freelance writing career? Whether you have two months or ten years of experience, we’re betting you’re well past having lost count. It is a numbers game, after all: the more good, publication-tailored ideas you pitch, the more work you’ll get.

Starting a freelance writing career sometimes feels like a Catch-22: in order to find work, you’re expected to have a robust portfolio showcasing all you can do. But in order to build up a portfolio in the first place, you need to…find work.

Freelance writers know how to get shit done. There isn’t really a rulebook for what we do, which makes it all the more exciting and worthwhile for so many of us. It’s a welcome challenge—a chance to take this craft that’s your calling and be able to exist in the world by doing it.