Home Office Setups for Writers pt 4
Tags: home office setups for writers, writing software
To be a professional writer you are also going to need your own webpage. Don’t expect that people will find you on searches, however, at least at first. Rather include your address on emails (get an email address through the site) and on your cards. This will give you a place to upload your portfolio for view by perspective clients and will give you background so that they know you are for real. Feel free to upload your resume and a bio as well. If you do put a portfolio on make sure the that the files are uploaded in PDF form as this makes them slightly harder to copy, and it will make the files non-searchable so that the search engines do not penalize you for ‘copying’ any of the text that you wrote for former clients that is currently online.
Print nice copies of your resume on nice paper for clients. Do it.
Software does create a problem. You will need a better program than WordPad certainly, but there are varieties of programs for Linux, Apple, Microsoft, and independent platforms. Writers will often swear by programs you have never heard of before, but the standard is to simply use Word by Microsoft. Adobe Illustrator may be necessary if you are preparing book pages, and Microsoft also has a program called Microsoft Publisher which does many of the same thing (though, many would argue, not as well).
Writing isn’t about the hardware of course, make sure to read, to watch the industry, and to always be on the lookouts for referrals and new clients. You an make it, hang in there.