Building a writer’s portfolio

New or veteran freelance writers need writing portfolios as an addition to their resume. The published writing samples contained in your writers’ portfolios, like the artwork in the artist’s portfolio, is a way to share your body of work with potential employers. Having your writing clips collected in one place (a portfolio or an electronic portfolio) keeps your writing samples available at any time.

what to collect

It is best to keep all the old and new writing samples. However, once a writer’s list of writing clips expands beyond a certain point, it’s no longer practical to carry them all around in your portable bag. Older samples are better archived. When does a writer start archiving writing clips? When is the cutoff point? That’s a decision best left up to the individual author. But keeping an index of each year’s clips or samples will help writers find older writing clips that may be appropriate to show to future employers. (You know, that travel article you wrote 3 years ago? Your next employer is looking for evidence that you wrote travel articles.)

For freelance writers just starting out, and who have few to no published articles, volunteer to write as many freebies as you can afford until you start getting clips with your name on them. These include local neighborhood newspapers with shoestring budgets, pet causes, pop-up magazines and ezines, scripts or play scripts for pop-up production companies. Even blogs can fill a writer’s portfolio. It’s wise for even published writers to write freebies from time to time just to keep their name up, especially when paid writing opportunities are scarce.

Anything with your byline, a publication name, and a publication date (if possible) is fodder for the writer’s portfolio. Freelancers who may write on multiple topics, or in more than one genre, can sort their portfolios by topic or genre to use for different jobs, matching clips to the job being applied for. Creating your own website and/or blog site is an ideal way to showcase 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 place to provide links to your published writing. on other websites, all for little or no cost.

For clips published in print, keep a full copy of the publication with your print story as evidence of which edition the story was published. The publication displays the publication number, publication name and date, as well as the author’s signature. For stories published on websites, print a hard copy of the article showing the name of the website, the URL, the name of the writer, and the date it was published (in most cases). If you print it 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 stories written, 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 have been removed or archived by the website.

How to Bring Writing Clips to Jobs

Writer’s Portfolio – The Paper VersionNote: Buy a 3-ring binder, preferably one that closes with a zipper and has handles for carrying (check office supply stores). Insert clear plastic protective sheets designed to carry 8.5 x 11-inch pages or 8 x 10-inch photos into a folder (also available at office supply stores).

Make 2-3 copies of each print or e-clip and place them on the plastic sheets. The 2-3 clips from Story #1 go on the first plastic strip, the copies of Story #2 go on the second plastic strip, and so on. They are ready to take with you. Save one of the plastic sheets for your resume copies and a second plastic sheet for type references.

Writer’s Portfolio – The Electronic Version: Scan the clips from paper publication writers into your computer and save them to a folder on your hard drive and a secondary location like a USB stick or CD, to keep them separate from your computer. If necessary, subcategorize them by publication, topic or genre.

For stories published online, maintain 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 typed it into your word processing program and saved it to your computer before copying and pasting it into the of the electronic publisher website. Keep these stories in folders by publisher, with subfolders sorted by month and year of publication. Save these files on the hard drive and on the secondary source (USB stick or CD). Make sure these files include any photos you’ve uploaded with your stories. Please keep a printed copy of the word processing document along with the copy downloaded from the website.

Electronically share your writing

Since you’ve indexed your story URLs, you can copy and paste them into the body of an email to send to potential employers. They can also be pasted into 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 eStories can also be added to print articles, newsletters, etc. for readers to type into search engines.

Advantages of having a writers portfolio online include: not having to provide paper copies, or pay the cost of mailing them and the stories in your portfolio can be viewed in their original format instead of faxes or copies. Among the disadvantages? 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 viruses are transmitted from a of the electronic publisher website or through emails. With this in mind, some potential clients or employers may prefer to have a hard copy of their portfolio stories rather than an electronic one.

Producing clips suitable for job applications

Whether online or in print, keep your clips organized so you can find your articles by topic, category, or genre. That way, you can provide specific story copies that match the expectations and needs of clients or employers. Don’t put all your stories in one online portfolio. Separate stories by genre, theme, or category and link to a button on your site. Provide readers with only the top 2-3 stories in 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 that showcase the different writing styles that showcase your writing skills: advertisements, articles, newsletters, promotional material, press releases.

Regularly update your online and paper writers’ portfolios, shelving old articles and replacing them with newer material. As he advances his writing career, his portfolio will expand and his writing skills will mature exponentially. Creating and updating your writer’s portfolios seems like a daunting task, but it’s a necessary one. And if you make a habit of regularly updating both portfolios, you’ll always be ready when new clients or employers call and look for new writers with current, exciting writing samples and great experience.

by Juana whetzel