Writing Opportunities Can Present Themselves in Many Ways

As a freelance writer, I am always looking for writing opportunities wherever I can find them, and one thing I have discovered over the years is that they present themselves in many ways — if you keep your eyes open.


I started out covering high school soccer for a local newspaper when I first began my career as a freelance writer, and my portfolio has grown exponentially since then. The writing opportunities I discovered revolved mainly around sports when I first got started, so I took what I could find and was grateful for what I received.

Before long, I was asked to start covering hard news and writing features for the same newspaper. It took some time to get acclimated to my new assignments, but before long, I was more than holding my own in those areas and was looking for more challenges.

Writing Opportunities....Finally It Comes

I was approached by a magazine about two years after I had originally started my career as a freelance writer, and I took to that very well. I liked the fact that the stories could be longer, more in-depth and take on more of a personal tone.

While I had received a number of writing opportunities at a fairly early point in my career, most of them revolved around journalism of some type. Now don't get me wrong, I love journalism and still find that I most enjoy writing for newspapers.

However, I wanted to try more creative styles of writing, and so I went out on my own, and tried my hands at short-story and poetry writing. I actually had a poem published almost as soon as I got started, but I soon found that I could wallpaper my house with all of the rejection slips I received on my short stories.

I kept at it, though, and before long, I managed to get one published. It was probably the most rewarding of anything that I ever had published, because I had to work so hard for it.

One of the more interesting writing opportunities I received stemmed from a story that I had actually written for a local newspaper on a woman who suffered from a rare disease. Her family asked if I would be willing to ghost-write a book on the disease for them, and they offered to pay me pretty well for doing so.

While I was sorely temped to take them up on their offer, I had to decline because it would have taken up too much of my time.

Writing opportunities abound for the aspiring writer. There are all kinds of outlets to express yourself in the written word; you just have to get out there and look.