Freelance Writing: Finding Your Focus

Whether you are new to the freelance writing scene or a current writer looking for a way to better your business, it’s important that you learn to find your focus. You need to determine both the focus of your business as well as the focus of each individual piece you write.

To be efficient in your writing and write content that sells, you can’t just jot down a bunch of scattered thoughts (unless you are getting paid for blogging). You need to have the proper elements of an article; a beginning, middle and end and you need to have a clear focus of what the article is about.

A good way to find this focus is to brainstorm before actually writing your article or piece. No matter how short or simple you think your assignment is, take some time to brainstorm. You may use freewriting, a cluster diagram, charts or any other combination of methods to do so. It doesn’t matter how you do it, only that you get it done.

This is how you will begin your writing process for everything that you will ever write. This writing process helps you get he creative juices flowing and also helps you see all possibilities with what to write about and how to develop your focus. When you have done this, you will need to do research to find more information and supporting facts for your topic and focus. You may also conduct interviews.

When you have gathered all of this information, you will need to weed through it to find out what you will be using and how. Keep your focus in mind at all times to be sure you don’t include needless junk. Anything that does not properly support the focus of your articles or piece does not belong.

Be sure to keep your audience in mind. Who are you writing for? What are trying to tell them? What is this piece trying to achieve? In what ways do you aim to complete these goals? How will you present the facts and the supporting statements in your piece? Will it be believable? Will it be engaging, keeping the reader’s attention?

So often as writers we get hung up on what we want to say that we lose our focus. We babble and stray from the topic and it shows in our completed piece. Finding your focus will help you develop a writing process, create and focus an idea, develop an outline of the project and follow through with this initial plan to create an engaging, successful piece of writing that completes it’s objectives with the audience.