Writers develop a skill of typing either fast enough, or slow enough, to match the array of thoughts floating through their brain. For difficult freelance writing topics, those thoughts may come slowly and painfully. For topics a writer is interested in, and knowledgeable about, those thoughts can flow fast. Sometimes they flow too fast, and the writer finds themselves off topic. Of course, the client isn’t interested in your tangents, so they must go, but do they have to go to the big, deleted article bit buckets in the sky?
Save Your Off Topic Ramblings
What is a freelance writer to do when after two hours of carefully crafting a wonderful treatise on all the many small business deductions a small business owner can take you suddenly realize the freelance writing assignment was 1,000 words about the home office deduction? These times can be trying for a freelancer. After all, the time spent here could have been spent on other assignments. Worse, all that wonderful, beautifully written knowledge is now useless. Or is it?
I have several pages on AP Style findings because I have rambled off into the land of editing and writing requirements. If you want to know if it’s on-site, or on site, I have an article for that. So, maybe there is value in those off-topic words.
As a writer with ADHD drifting off topic is on brand for me. Fortunately, I found a way to take those off-topic words, and like a rose bush, carefully cut them out, so that they can be planted elsewhere. All those small business deductions that were not the home office deduction can find a home many places, most of all, my personal finance blog. Admittedly, other tangents can be harder to find a home for. The brilliance of the special effects invented for Star Wars crowds out better information about popular culture in the 1970s. That cutting will be harder to find a home for. If those words can neither be extended into a home, or cut down into a home, then there is always Medium. You can put anything on Medium.