Again, my RSS reader was chock-a-block of great posts, and since I’m behind in my reading, you’ll have to forgive the slew of posts my backlog might produce.

There’s a a great post on Freelance Switch titled “The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Guide to Freelancing”, that deals with two of my favourite things (Buffy & writing), which got me thinking. Since I’m just trying to jump back into the freelancing life while still working full-time, I definitely need to make sure that I’m ready to go at a moment’s notice. I don’t have time to pussy-foot around (as my father used to say when I was a little girl), and the idea of thinking about my freelance career like Buffy thought about slaying was just too intriguing.

Grace brings up a lot of good points in her post, and the one that really struck me is the “Grab your opportunities with full force” idea. (Before I continue please don’t forget to go and read the full article on FreelanceSwitch, as these are just my thoughts on the ideas that she brings up.)

The first step would be to simply recognize the opportunity that presents itself to you. Writing opportunities aren’t as obvious as vampire-staking ones (in my opinion <wink>), so it’s important to simply recognize them. Aside from the obvious “I just got an email about a potential writing job” type of opportunities, what about the subtle ones? The ones that you wouldn’t normally think as a freelance writing opportunity? Like:

• Did one of my freelance friends tweet that they were having problems writing up a proposal? Perhaps I could help out.
• Did one of my developer friends mention he was getting ready to release a new Wordpress theme? Maybe I could offer my technical editing services and clean up any default text he’s got in there.

I’ve got to start recognizing these types of opportunities, because they’re not in my usual “realm” of technical writing (at least not in my freelancing life). I’ve also got to start recognizing the non-traditional types of writing opportunities that appear to me like blog post jobs, editing jobs and so on. If I want to expand my product offering, I’ve got to be on the lookout for these types of jobs as well.

The second step for me is simply asking for the job. Whenever I go on a job interview, I’m able to clearly say to the interviewer that I want the job, that I hope they give me the job, and that I look forward to working with them when they offer me the job. I’m confident in both my skills as a writer and an interviewee that I’m able to ask for the job. But it’s something that took me a lot of years to learn and remember. I often thought that just getting the interview and answering all the questions was enough. But if you don’t tell them that you’re interested in the job and that you want it, they might just give it to someone else. Same thing with writing jobs. I might hear about writing issues people are having, or see a job post somewhere that interests me, but unless I get off my duff and send off an email or make a phone call, I’m not going to get that job. When I was rocking the freelance life full time, I was able to do that in spades, with both this blog, my Twitter account and other freelance connections. Now I’ve got to dive back into that, to start looking at what’s out there and then start asking for those jobs. I need to find the opportunities and then go after them. That could be with an email, a phone call, or a tweet (for now I’m going to skip the in-person chances since I’m just looking for part-time work right now–plus, since I’m at the office working during the day, meetings will be a little more difficult).

And on that note, I’m going to sign off and start hunting around for a few opportunities. I’ve got to get started sometime!