Freelance writers, new or old, need writing portfolios as an attachment to their resume. The published writing samples contained in your writers’ portfolios, such as the artwork in the artist’s portfolio, is a way to share your work with potential employers. Having your writing clips collected in one place, a portfolio or electronic portfolio, keeps your writing samples available at any time.
What to collect
It is best to keep all old and new writing samples. However, once the writer’s writing clip list expands beyond a certain point, it is no longer practical to carry all of them in your portable folder. Older samples are best archived. When does a writer start archiving writing clips? When is the cut-off point? It is a decision that is best left to each author. But keeping an index of clips or samples from each year will help writers find older writing clips that may be appropriate for showing to future employers. (You know, that travel article you wrote 3 years ago? Your next employer is looking for evidence that you’ve written travel articles.)
For freelance writers just starting out with few, if any, articles published, volunteer to write as many gifts as you can afford until they start getting clips with your name on them. These include local neighborhood newspapers with tight budgets, favorite causes, startup magazines, and ezines, scripts, or play scripts for startup production companies. Even blogs can fill a writer’s portfolio. It’s wise for even published writers to write giveaways from time to time just to keep their name up, especially when paid writing opportunities are rare.
Anything that has your signature, a publication name, and a publication date (if possible) is fodder for the writer’s portfolio. For freelancers who can write on multiple topics, or in more than one genre, they can sort their portfolios by topic or genre to use in different jobs, matching clips to the job being requested. Setting up your own website and / or blog site is an ideal way to show off your web skills, as well as your writing skills, and acts as a way for potential employers to locate and contact you, as well as a venue to provide links to your published writings. on other websites, all for little or no cost.
For clips published in print, keep a full copy of the publication with your printed story as proof of which edition the story was published. The publication shows the publication number, publication name and date, as well as the author’s signature. For stories posted on websites, print a hard copy of the article that will show the website name, URL, author name, and the date it was published (in most cases). If you print it on the same day it appears on the website, the printing date appears at the bottom of the page next to the URL. Keep an index of all written stories, categorized by website, and be sure to include the URL to link to that story. You may need to check the index from time to time to see which stories are still available online and which ones have been removed or archived by the website.
Bring writing clips to work
Writer’s portfolio: the paper version: Buy a 3-ring binder, preferably one that closes the zipper and has handles for carrying it (check office supply stores). Insert clear plastic slip sheets designed to hold 8.5 x 11-inch pages or 8 x 10-inch photos into a binder (also available at office supply stores).
Make 2 to 3 copies of each print or electronic clip and place them on the plastic sheets. The 2 or 3 clips of the story n. 1 go on the first plastic sheet, the copies of story n. 2 on the second plastic sheet, and so on. They are ready to take with you. Keep one of the plastic sheets for your resume copies and a second plastic sheet for type references.
Writer’s Portfolio – The Electronic Version: Scan paper post writers clips to your computer and save them to a folder on your hard drive and a secondary location, such as a USB stick or CD, to keep them separate from your computer. If necessary, subcategorize them by post, topic, or genre.
For stories published online, keep an index file by electronic publisher that includes the name of the story, the month and year of publication, and the URLs for each story. Also save a copy of your story where you wrote it in your word processing program and put it on your computer before copying and pasting it into your computer. from the electronic publisher website. Keep these stories in folders by publisher, with subfolders categorized by month and year of publication. Save these files to hard drive and secondary source (USB stick or CD). Make sure these files include the photos you uploaded with your stories. Keep a hard copy of the word processing document along with the copy downloaded from the website.
Electronically share your writing
Since you’ve indexed the URLs for your stories, you can copy and paste them into the body of an email to send to potential employers. They can also be pasted on your blog or website as links or as references that others can copy and paste into a search engine to search. This is one way to turn your personal blog or website into an online writer’s portfolio. The URLs of your e-stories can also be added to print articles, newsletters, etc., for readers to write to search engines.
The advantages of having an online writer’s portfolio include: not having to provide paper copies, or paying the cost of mailing them, and the stories in your portfolio can be viewed in their original format rather than faxed or copied . Among the disadvantages? The electronically published stories are ready and waiting for someone to plagiarize, which is becoming a real problem. How many times have you researched a topic online and found the same article, word for word, supposedly written by three or more different authors? There is also the problem that the virus is transmitted from a from the electronic publisher website or emails. With this in mind, some prospective clients or employers may prefer to have a hard copy of their portfolio stories rather than an electronic one.
Production of clips suitable for work applications
Whether online or on paper, keep your clips organized so you can find your articles by topic, category, or genre. That way, you can provide copies of specific stories to match the expectations and needs of clients or employers. Don’t put all of your stories in one online portfolio. Separate stories by genre, topic, or category and link to a button on your site. Provide readers with only the best 2-3 stories under each genre, topic, or category button.
Send links to your stories or email attachments as a self-promotion to potential new clients or employers. Try to have a variety of samples showing the different writing styles that show off your writing skills: announcements, articles, newsletters, promotional material, press releases.
Periodically update your editor’s portfolios on paper and online, archiving older articles and replacing them with newer material. As your writing career progresses, your portfolios will expand and your writing skills will mature exponentially. Creating and updating your writer’s portfolios seem like daunting tasks, but they are necessary. And if you are in the habit of regularly updating both portfolios, you will always be ready when new clients or employers call and search for new writers with current and exciting writing samples and great experience.
By Joan Whetzel
