I’ve been a freelance writer, and I’ve been someone who hires freelance writers, and I’ve been meaning to write more about this.
The biggest concern I have as a person hiring freelance writers was seldom actually “is this person a great writer”. You don’t really need to be a great writer. You just need to be good enough. And then, more importantly, you need to not waste my time.
And as a person who tries to be fair and equitable – I don’t want to waste your time either! I actually felt uncomfortable when writers would sometimes send me entire articles that they’d written just for me – because you put so much effort into it that I didn’t ask for!
What do we do, then? I think the most optimal thing is to talk about briefs. A brief doesn’t take a lot of effort to put together, so it’s not an unreasonable thing to ask of someone. A good brief is compelling, it makes me want to work with you. And if the brief’s not that good, well, you didn’t end up wasting more than a few minutes on it, so no harm.